Hippocrates review – season 3: the masterful return of a vital series

In the space of two seasons broadcast in 2018 and 2021, Hippocrates by Thomas Lilti has established itself as a benchmark series in French medical drama, as well as an alarming inventory of our country's hospital institutions.

Three years after its last chapter, the series is back to provide a new observation – inevitably dramatic – of the state of the hospital system, particularly after the Covid-19 crisis. What is this season 3 worth?Hippocrates ? Here is our review, guaranteed without spoilers.

The history of the series

It's summer. By decision of health authorities, many hospital services have been closed and those that remain open are overloaded. A strike by SOS Médecins worsens the situation, leaving an entire population without access to care. Patients are flocking, tensions are palpable. At Poincaré hospital, caregivers quickly realize that the instructions are untenable and some decide to disobey.

Our review

Released in April 2021, the second season of the series (filmed in the middle of a pandemic) appeared to be a fair and visionary work, depicting a hospital system that wears out the men and women who make it up to the breaking point. Armed with the same conviction, this season 3 arrives in another paradigm, where disobedience is required.

The metaphor of season 2, which showed the caregivers struggling in a flooded Poincaré hospital, here gives way to a more frontal reality. In the middle of the summer period, services are restricted despite the uninterrupted flow of patients. Stuck between the absurd “no”s of their superiors and their professional ethics, our group of caregivers will enter into resistance.

This third season thus seems to pose a terrible question. What to do when the institution has become a business and moves away from the famous Hippocratic Oath: “My first concern will be to restore, preserve or promote health in all its elements, physical and mental, individual and social.”

At the heart of this Kafkaesque story, the viewer finds himself confronted with the crises of conscience and moments of doubt of the caregivers sent to the front: in a violent city, facing a schizophrenic teenager, alongside a senile grandmother, a migrant in distress… A tangle of finely written intimate tragedies, which unfolds like a patchwork of contemporary considerations and inevitably crashes against the wall of decision-makers and, let's say it, government decisions.

At the helm of this gripping human ballet, screenwriter/director and former doctor Thomas Lilti tells us that after the era of solidarity, caregivers are more than ever outlaws, preserving their oath in a system that doesn't care. Lilti's intelligence is to once again place its formidable cast at the forefront of its story.

A gallery of actors, each more endearing than the other (Alice Belaïdi, Bouli Lanners, Karim Leklou in the lead), who bring all the spice to this “medical drama” having nothing to envy of the iconic EMERGENCIES et House. Hippocrates confirms its status as a French reference series, and that feels good.

Although its new starting point is interesting (post-Covid summer), we could nevertheless criticize this third season for not sufficiently breaking its model in terms of length, and not sufficiently renewing its issues in its last episodes.

Certain situations (conflict with management, errors, situations with patients) do not avoid a certain redundancy. We therefore advise you not to rush your viewing and to savor these six episodes so as not to observe the seams of the program too much.

These few drawbacks aside, this third season ofHippocrates is a vintage of high quality, which intelligently revitalizes its subject and offers a gripping, poignant and still human drama. We come away as upset as we are angry, but above all convinced of its status as a necessary series. Did you say vital?

Season 3 ofHippocrates is available on Canal+ and myCanal from November 11, 2024.

• Watch the series teaser:

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