Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day

The first of a landmark eight-part series, filmed on a single day in the NHS. 100 camera crews filming across the country capture the extraordinary breadth of demands placed on the country's biggest institution on just one day at a critical time in its history. On this day, 1,300 of us will die, 2,000 will be born and one and a half million of us will be treated. In this first episode alone, this groundbreaking portrait of our national health service moves across the country revealing how the NHS copes with the growing demands of obesity, old age and cancer amongst others. While Matron Liz deals with 130 patients through her doors in a Clinical Decision Unit in Birmingham, patient Lynn's weight-loss surgery in Chichester is interrupted by a devastating discovery. Further north in Leeds, stroke doctors use a revolutionary treatment to save the speech and movement of 64-year-old Graham. 'Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day' provokes profound questions about what the NHS does for us now and what we expect of it in the future.

Anxious parents await news from a critical scan and an ex-boxing champ battles his demons.

A top surgeon performs a high risk brain operation while the patient is still awake.

The story of a tetraplegic coming to terms with a changed relationship with his daughter.

A patient is taken out to help assess whether he's well enough to return to the community.