Maternal is ITV's major new medical drama

Does Parminder Nagra own her own set of scrubs? She probably should – after all, she’s played a member of the medical profession so many times she’s almost an honorary doctor.

After making her name in the movie Bend It Like Beckham, the Leicester-born star spent six years in global smash-hit ER before playing a psychiatrist in TV series Alcatraz. She’s also played doctors in seasons two and three of Sky’s baffling drama Fortitude, Netflix’s horror movie Bird Box, sitcom Black-ish and the romantic comedy Five Feet Apart.

Now she’s returning to the small screen to stalk the wards once more in a new six-part series about three women returning to post-pandemic frontline medicine after being on maternity leave.

The programme reunites Nagra with Bafta-nominated director James Griffiths, whose previous work includes the aforementioned Black-ish, as well as Episodes and A Million Little Things.

She’s joined in the cast by Lara Pulver, who plays single mum and skilled surgeon Ms Catherine MacDiarmid, and Lisa McGrillis, whose on-screen alter ego, Dr Helen Cavendish, is a registrar in acute medicine. Nagra, meanwhile, takes the role of Dr Maryam Afridi, a paediatrician who wonders if she can remain emotionally detached from her patients having now had a child of her own.

After watching the drama, the role seems to have been tailor-made for her, but that’s not the case.

“Lara Pulver and I are best mates and neighbours in LA,” smiles the 47-year-old star. “During the pandemic we’ve been doing a lot of our audition tapes together. So when she taped her audition to play Catherine in Maternal, I read the opposite parts – both Helen and Maryam. And during her call back, the director, James Griffiths, said, ‘Can I give Parminder a note?’ It made me laugh but also think, ‘How dare you? I’m not even up for this project!’

“The following day, I got an email asking me to audition as Maryam. I did my audition tape with Lara’s husband, Raza Jaffrey, who is also my very good friend and who had been cast to play Jack, a surgeon and a former boyfriend of Catherine. So we took our whole kit and caboodle to Liverpool for filming like a little family. To get a chance to work alongside Lara, who I love and respect, is just fantastic.”

Nagra also admits that her previous experience of playing medics proved to be both a help and a hindrance: “I did feel like medicine was a little bit still in there, even down to technically how to camouflage things for the camera. Like when you’re intubating a patient, you hold your hand in a certain way to mask the fact you’re not really doing it.

“The funniest part was that some of the terminology that I got used to saying on ER, I was told, ‘That’s not how you say it here.’ It’s pronounced differently in Britain.”

As has often been said, a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. But there’s clearly something about Nagra that makes viewers believe she really could carry out a life-saving procedure – with that in mind, you can bet those scrubs will get another airing soon.