June 2023 newsletter: What surgeons really want in TV Medical Dramas + OKRE goes to Docfest

Professor Kourosh Saeb-Parsy, Professor of Transplantation at the University of Cambridge, is one of the country’s leading surgeons and medical professionals. He found himself getting frustrated by some of the medical dramas on TV:

“Either they were factually inaccurate or else so very simplified that they lost credibility. They might as well be fantasy, this is not how real life operates…”

So when OKRE approached him to consult on a highly rated TV drama, produced by HTM Productions, he said it felt like an interesting and inspiring thing to do.

Here, we’ve gathered his top tips for researchers and TV producers looking to get the best from one another…

Astrologaster is a comical and participatory story-telling game set in Elizabethan London, inspired by the casebooks of the Elizabethan occultist and ‘agent of the devil’, Simon Forman.

Developed by independent games developer Nyamyam in partnership with Cambridge University, this interactive game is now part of the British Library’s ‘Digital Storytelling’ exhibition which explores how technology has changed the way we tell stories.

Astrologaster was seeded at a Wellcome Trust games workshop where Jennifer Schneideriet from Nyamyam met Lauren Kassell, Director of the University of Cambridge’s Casebooks project…