Season 2 portrays a “sinking hospital”

A fiction caught up with reality. At the start of the first season ofHippocrates, a virus imposed a quarantine on the incumbents, leaving the interns alone in charge. “A sort of foreknowledge of what was going to happen”, underlines Thomas Lilti, the creator of the series. At the start of season 2 ofHippocrates, launched this Monday at 9:05 p.m. on Canal + and written before the start of the health crisis, a pipe break forced the emergency department of the Poincaré hospital to fall back into the internal medicine department. “A metaphor for the sinking hospital”, concedes Thomas Lilti, with whom 20 minutes spoke at a press conference organized by the encrypted channel. A portrait of a public hospital under pressure, out of breath, held at arm’s length by the nursing staff, for a series that today takes on all its political dimension. “I wanted to tell the story of the hospital just before the health crisis,” explains Thomas Lilti.

“There was this desire to be more spectacular, more rhythmic. This rhythm, I found it in the idea of ​​bringing back emergencies “at the heart of the intrigue, tells Thomas Lilti, who remembers having been” bottle-fed “in the venerable hospital series. Emergency room while studying medicine in the 1990s.

Caregivers “put in a situation of failure”

With the repatriation of the emergency department in internal medicine, the protagonists ofHippocrates “Find themselves once again on the front line in an unsuitable service, with unprepared nursing staff, and the wrong means to cope with a difficult situation. “And to add:” I obviously could not imagine that this is what we were going to live in reality a few months later. “

Alyson (Alice Belaïdi) discovers “a vocation” alongside a new mentor, Olivier Brun (Bouli Lanners), the tattooed head of the emergency department. “I had wanted for a long time to build a charismatic doctor, who is a field doctor. A figure little seen in medical fiction. It denotes with the image we have of the doctor and yet, I have known hospital doctors who resemble him, ”comments Thomas Lilti.

Conversely, Hugo “is very quickly downgraded, put aside” because he “needs time to see the patients”. “With this idea which is close to my heart, we put caregivers in a situation of failure, in a situation where they can only fail, because they are not armed to do so, and then, we blame them to fail, ”analyzes the screenwriter.

The brilliant Chloée (Louis Bourgoin) is “in difficulties, and is hiding”. As a result of her unsafe operation, she lost the use of her left hand and completely lost confidence in herself. “What does the caregiver do? Having two working hands, self-confidence or medical skills? “Asks Thomas Lilti, who is delighted that his character finally reveals” a part of humanity “.

Caregivers “in pain”

Arben (Karim Leklou), which we understand at the end of season 1, that he has “a problem of diplomas”, no longer practices medicine and is conspicuous by his absence. “It was a pretty effective cliffhanger, but you still have to find it in season 2! », Underlines Thomas Lilti.

The emergency room intern Igor (Théo Navarro-Mussy), seen in season 1, “extremely talented, and very sympathetic”, becomes one of the pillars of this season 2. “He is under water, he cannot succeed. more. He is in pain and is starting to make mistakes, ”announces Thomas Lilti.

The fate of the fictional characters ofHippocrates resonates sadly with that of caregivers today in France. “The series fits perfectly into today’s world and current events,” observes Thomas Lilti. More than the extended days, what hurts caregivers “is above all not being able to do their job well. “

Caregivers “who feel helpless”

This season 2 addresses the issue of welcoming people with mental disorders and psychiatric care. “The hospital is not at all suitable. The young doctor that I was able to be, or those in the series, are neither ready nor trained to deal with mental illness, ”notes Thomas Lilti.

Mental illness is also “a reflection of the ill-being of caregivers, who feel powerless, and are themselves contaminated by the psychiatric disorder,” says Thomas Lilti. “The hospital, the morale and the physical and mental health of the caregivers are damaged. When you don’t take care of your caregivers, you don’t take care of your patients, ”laments the ex-doctor. In Hippocrates, “We try to tell this while remaining romantic, but there is this subtext”, he insists.

Caregivers, “the next door”

“This production ended up in the middle of Covid, it was reality that caught up with fiction. It was difficult, but it brought us all together, ”says Agnès Vallée, producer of June 31 Films. “I wondered if what I was telling was still relevant or if the news was exploding my fiction”, confides the creator.

The shooting ofHippocrates takes place in a disused wing of the Robert Ballanger hospital center in Seine-Saint-Denis. While the caregivers of the establishment usually figured in fiction, it was Thomas Lilti’s turn to “push open the next door” and temporarily put on the white coat. “These two worlds that we thought were watertight have finally caught up. Everything has turned upside down. The extraordinary world was them, us, we were just watching TV, ”he says.

Episodes 7 and 8 are then not yet written. “We wondered if we should integrate the Covid. I was afraid of using what we were going through for entertainment, ”he explains.

The coronavirus makes its appearance during the last scene of the season. “The arrival of the Covid gives the end of this season a more collective resonance,” he believes. Because this season tells precisely what many people discovered during the first confinement: “Caregivers on the verge of rupture, this discomfort, this hospital which is crumbling, and this enormous surge of humanity that we can know in the hospital, the selflessness of the caregivers, their stubbornness in trying to help others, etc. This courage that we were able to applaud in the evening, ”he summarizes.

If season 1 was acclaimed by the public and the critics, there is no doubt that this season 2 will find an even stronger resonance with the spectators. “Health and the world of hospitals have been part of our daily lives for a year,” says Thomas Lilti.

For a long time, the former doctor had a feeling of “guilt” at having stopped “treating people” in order to make fiction, a choice he “accepts more easily today” because he can “bring a lighting on the hospital and caregivers ”. And take advantage of its notoriety to hammer home this message: “We must put the resources into the hospital, because we are all concerned. “