The opening of this series was very good, and that is why I kept on watching it. However, I feel the series suffers from a lack of direction: it knows not what it wants to do. While the central concern shifts from scientific investigation of diseases and their cures to personal lives of the major characters --their love and betrayal, ambition and disgrace -- the series starts to descend into melodrama. This is unfortunate because the series deals with a prestigious real institution, and real historical doctors, some of whom later went on to win the Noble Prize.
There are also several issues that the series picks up, only to discard them without exploration. For example, in the last episode, we are shown a "human zoo" comprising of "22 inhabitants from the Indian Subcontinent". The human zoo is conducted by the historical figure Carl Hagenbeck. Yet, he claims to have "Senegalese" and "Bengalese" people in his zoo. Needless to say, Senegal is not in the Indian Subcontinent, and there is no such people as Bengalese. The Indian people are shown to be clad in elaborate turbans and saris, and when one woman dies of pox, she gifts her nurse (who previously called her "dark as chimney" and "cannibal") an oriental-looking pendant. I think this part is very callously made, and stinks of what Edward Said would call Orientalism. Those people from the Indian subcontinent seem to function only as a source of momentary exoticism in the series, something Hagenbeck tried to do in the late 1800s.
There are also several issues that the series picks up, only to discard them without exploration. For example, in the last episode, we are shown a "human zoo" comprising of "22 inhabitants from the Indian Subcontinent". The human zoo is conducted by the historical figure Carl Hagenbeck. Yet, he claims to have "Senegalese" and "Bengalese" people in his zoo. Needless to say, Senegal is not in the Indian Subcontinent, and there is no such people as Bengalese. The Indian people are shown to be clad in elaborate turbans and saris, and when one woman dies of pox, she gifts her nurse (who previously called her "dark as chimney" and "cannibal") an oriental-looking pendant. I think this part is very callously made, and stinks of what Edward Said would call Orientalism. Those people from the Indian subcontinent seem to function only as a source of momentary exoticism in the series, something Hagenbeck tried to do in the late 1800s.