Anthology Series 'Malpractice' Casts Tom Hughes for Season 2

The current TV season is awash in medical dramas. The "don't call it an ER revival" The Pitt is a hit on HBO, Doc is far less so on American broadcast; Pulse, a Grey's Anatomy knock off, is coming to Netflix, and over on Paramount, someone asked, "What if Sherlock Holmes, but sans Sherlock and medical?" an lo, Watson was born. The U.K. is more into the police procedural than the medical drama. Still, even ITV has looked at the landscape and decided the one thing that was missing from the world was "What if Line of Duty, but medical?" and lo, Malpractice arrived on ITV and ITVX in 2023, with a second season now on the way for 2025.

It is unclear whether the plan from the beginning was an anthology series. Season 1 featured Niamh Algar (Playing Nice) as Dr Lucinda Edwards, who has a very bad day at the ER office when a patient is accidentally given an overdose on the table. The incident causes Dr. Norma Callahan (Helen Behan) and Dr. George Adjei (Jordan Kouamé) of the Medical Investigation Unit, aka the MIU (the AC-12 of the series), to look into the incident. Critics didn't mind the concept, but the consensus was that Algar was miscast, and her character was an uncompelling center of the investigation.

So when ITV renewed the series, it announced the show would henceforth be an anthology, with the MIU characters as connective tissue between seasons. As for Season 2, the new doctor at the center of a controversial decision with tragic consequences is Dr. James Ford, played by Victoria's Tom Hughes.