Mikhail Bulgakov

The first series of Sky's A Young Doctor's Notebook - a stagey comedy drama set in a rural Russian hospital in 1917 and starring Daniel Radcliffe and Mad Men's Jon Hamm - plunged from cheerful if gory slapstick (cue wheezy accordions and balalaikas) to the sort of black despair familiar from even the sunniest Russian literature of the era (the plays are adapted from the stories by Mikhail Bulgakov). One moment Radcliffe (straight out of medical school) was happily yanking a tooth or sawing a peasant's leg off, the next he was a morphine addict peeing the bed, accompanied by an increasingly raddled-looking Hamm - Radcliffe's future self as a grownup medic flitting between reading his old diaries in the Stalinist 1930s and returning to his former haunts with a dazed expression and a needle in his arm. It's not Call the Midwife.

Amazingly, Hamm was off the drugs in this opening to series two (thanks to a bracing spell in a municipal straitjacket), though Radcliffe wasn't, and was soon watering down the morphine for the benefit of a suspicious government inspector arriving imminently to do a stock count. Luckily the man arrived with three bullets in him, courtesy of the revolution raging outside, and if he ended up dying as a result... well, would it be the end of the world? For him it was of course. And so agonising. What was wrong with that morphine!

Sometimes, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, you end up doing neither. Even so, there is something compelling about this barmy pursuit of redemption - the figure of experience revisiting his innocent descent into hell, blaming his younger self for succumbing to temptation but also offering forgiveness.

Almost a year since they first teamed up for Playhouse Presents, Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm return for another four-part romp as junior and senior versions of Mikhail Bulgakov's incident-prone doctor in rural Russia. This time out, though, the morphine-addled roles have been reversed. As the bleakly comic drama picks up in 1935, Hamm is almost Don Draper-esque - all cleaned up after kicking the habit - while Radcliffe is rapidly flushing his career down the toilet, tapping the surgery's supplies to keep himself comfortably numb.

This comedy drama has delivered record-breaking ratings for Sky Arts, hopefully as a result of its excellence as an adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's short stories as well as the celebrity of Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm, both also superb. In tonight's final episode, the Doctor's morphine addiction, an inevitable response to a snowbound life in which every knock at the door brings a fresh hell, becomes overwhelming. The series' triumphant tragi-hilarious balance is particularly well struck in the incident of the husband with the dazzling trousers.

It's Russia, 1917. Revolution is in the air. But not for Daniel Radcliffe's young Doctor, who divides his time between the horror of the operating room and the mind-bending tedium of staring at endless snow. The heightened, eventually hilarious gloom of Mikhail Bulgakov's writing has been successfully brought to life in this series. It's also surprisingly gory and, as the final episode approaches, a careful balance will have to be struck between bleak humour and genuine tragedy. Tonight, excitement is high at the prospect of the delivery of some pickled sprats. So when a knock at the door simply delivers yet another dying peasant, it's no wonder that the contents of the medicine cabinet become impossible to resist. A good idea, nicely done.

The older doctor (Jon Hamm) is looking sweaty and wan in his 1934 Moscow practice under the withering gaze of a Soviet soldier. As they both stare meaningfully at his diaries, we are wafted back to 1917 and that spartan clinic in the back of beyond.

On the page this is one of author Mikhail Bulgakov's most poignant stories, as the young doctor (Daniel Radcliffe), who has grown a feeble beard in the hope that it will make him seem more mature, faces a terrible predicament when a distraught father brings in his gravely injured young daughter.

Prepare for buckets of stomach-churning gore (be warned, it's unsparing) and low farce.

Adapted from Mikhail Bulgakov's series of short stories, Sky Arts 1's four-parter was always going to be darkly comic. But it's not until Daniel Radcliffe, playing a callow backwoods doctor at the dawn of the Russian revolution, amputates an eight-year-old girl's leg that the humour in this second episode really kicks into high gear (if you'll forgive the pun). Fine, Sky's PR team can call this a 'comedy drama' if it likes. But this is gross-out slapstick of the highest order - having more in common with The Evil Dead than any brooding, costumed piece of period schmaltz. Meanwhile, the noose continues to tighten round Jon Hamm, who plays the older version of Radcliffe (the show is essentially a series of flashbacks, in which the older doctor counsels his younger self). Will his state inquisitor discover he's addicted morphine? Almost certainly, but it's difficult to care when the set pieces are this brilliant. Comedy, 1. Drama, 0.

Sky's been on a bit of a role in terms of comedy commissions. While most of the notable ones have been on Sky1 and Sky Atlantic, other channels have been making their own shows, with this one coming from Sky Arts 1.

A Young Doctor's Notebook is based on a collection of short stories made by the Soviet novelist Mikhail Bulgakov, most famous for his book The Master and Margarita. The story's told via extracts from an old doctor in 1930s Moscow (played by Mad Men star Jon Hamm), about his experiences working in tiny village hospital in the middle of nowhere just after his graduation in 1917 (his younger self being played by Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame).

The opening story see the young doctor arrive at his new practice and dealing with his much more experience staff: Anna (Vicki Pepperdine), a midwife who is obsessed with the doctor's late predecessor Leopold Leopoldovich; fellow midwife Pelageya (Rosie Cavaliero) and the boring feldsher (Adam Godley). As the story goes on, the young doctor finds himself mysteriously in conflict with his older self, who keeps telling him what to do.

This opening episode was highly enjoyable. I've read some of Bulgakov's work before (i.e. Heart of a Dog) so I know a bit about his life and the book's in some ways based on his own experiences as a doctor in the Russian countryside. It does make you wonder exactly how much of it's based on stuff which occurred to him as there's quite a lot of gore. One of the most horrific yet funny scenes involves the young doctor trying to extract a tooth from a patient, which first leads him to drag the patient around the floor, before doing something I don't think it would be wise to mention now.

It's not just the slapstick which is good, but the characters too, especially the staff the doctor has to work with. The feldsher for example makes a study of how many things you can possibly fit into the young doctor's luggage (he counts socks individually).

Many people will be watching A Young Doctor's Notebook just to see the high-profile leads, but there's much more to this programme than just the cast.

From a visual perspective, A Young Doctor's Notebook may owe more to the latter school of casting than the former, given that Daniel Radcliffe played the younger self of John Hamm - or to put it in popular and no less incredible terms, Harry Potter grew up to become Don Draper. Yet strangely the combination worked, in no small part owing to the pair sharing the same scenes.

In this adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's autobiographical short stories about life as a country doctor in pre-revolutionary Russia, Hamm played the older conscience offering sage advice to the fresh-faced graduate. The tone was knockabout bordering on slapstick, and while neither actor is a born comedian, together they made an entertaining double act.

There was a lot of gore which arrived later in the week courtesy of A Young Doctor's Notebook. Based on a collection of Russian short stories written by Mikhail Bulgakov, this four-part comedy drama gained much press coverage for its choice of leads, the former boy-wizard Daniel Radcliffe and Mad Man Jon Hamm. The latter plays the former's older self, reading the notebook he wrote as a newly qualified doctor, posted to the remote village of Muryovo. Radcliffe plays out the drama as the older doctor reads - though, curiously, Hamm also turns up in this "past" to advise his young self.

It's all very meta-playful, and Radcliffe is particularly good as the novice with not much of a clue as to how to deal with the ailments set before him; his training in reacting to green screens for eight Harry Potter movies means he can now choose from an excellent store of characterful glances that say as much as anything that comes from his mouth.

The bloodshed encountered in this first episode came courtesy of a rare feat of obstetrics, and a soldier with toothache (resulting in an extracted jawbone). One suspects there's rather more gore to come, given that Radcliffe is doing his thing in 1917 - at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution - and Hamm's office appears to be getting a good going over by Soviet officers in 1934.

Those with knowledge of Bulgakov will also enjoy drawing comparisons with the author's life - he himself was a doctor posted to the middle of nowhere before turning to writing - and will revel in the way he toys with his own reality in the retelling.

Starring Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) and Jon Hamm (Mad Men), A Young Doctor's Notebook is a new series on Sky Arts 1 based on short stories by the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov. Set mostly in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, it follows the misadventures of a doctor whose first practice is in the remotest possible countryside. It's principally a comedy, although, as Russian comedy is near-indistinguishable from Russian tragedy (all pain, poverty, disaster and death), the label is perhaps superfluous. Let's just call it Russian.

Hamm was the doctor's older self, who keeps turning up from the future to give his younger self advice. As the other actors were British, and spoke in their normal voices, Hamm had to fit in, leaving him in the unusual position of being an American playing a Russian speaking like an Englishman. Or at least, an American actor's idea of the way an Englishman speaks, i.e., somewhere between Jeremy Irons and a supercilious ghost.

Radcliffe, beady eyes cutely twinkling, was the doctor's younger self. Even at 23 he looks 13, making him well suited to the role, as his character is routinely derided for his youthfulness. Anyway, he was good, which was a relief. I'd hate to have to say he was bad. It would make me feel horribly guilty, as if I'd trodden on a hamster's paw.

The action was a peculiar mix of silliness and gore, but there were some good lines.
Radcliffe (to Hamm, who's waving a scary surgical tool): "Careful, you could have an eye out."