Medical dramas are predicated on the idea that talented and dedicated professionals will do whatever it takes to save the lives of those in their charge, even if it means they get hauled before panels of their peers to be accused of egotism and being a maverick.  Which is alright as far as it goes, but far from the whole story.

This I know from my experience at the weekend: I spent Saturday night at an A&E department accompanying someone who was suffering the consequences of being overdosed on their meds.  For three days, they’d been taking four times what they should have been, a daily dosage 100mg above the maximum dose of that medication.  In other words, there was quite a sense of urgency about the whole business as I rushed to hospital with him.

And then we were told to sit in the waiting room.  There were detailed instructions for washing your hands properly, which is apparently all that stands between you and pig flu.  And a few drink and snack dispensing machines, two of them broken.  So we waited.  And were asked to move into another waiting room, this one further within the hospital.  The staff ambled about and by their casual actions and demeanour did a good job of putting you at ease, though at the back of my mind I was thinking ‘Shouldn’t they have got the stomach pump out by now?’.

Getting On is a BBC4 comedy set in the kind of backwaters ward that they never show you in Casualty.  It’s written and performed by Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlon, and it’s a beautifully observed portrait of the petty gossipy way that many institutions operate.  In the absence of something useful to do, people do stupid stuff instead: in this case two colleagues falling out over a hamper that each of them claims to have won in a raffle.  More seriously, at least on the surface, nurse Kim Wilde (Brand) has been accused of homophobia by a male matron.

The ensuing conflict resolution strategy meeting is a masterclass in nonsense, a heavyhanded way of dealing with an offhand remark Brand’s character made to a colleague.  Sure, she was insensitive — but he is oversensitive, a pompous vegan who declares he can’t be in the same room as a pork pie.  All that righteousness doesn’t stop him from getting oral sex from another of the female nurses, who is understandably confused about the recipient’s sexuality, wondering why he’s playing the ambiguously gay card (which may rightly be his) since she’s still half-hankering for the blowjob in the back of a taxi to blossom into a relationship.

It’s messy, it’s pathetic, and it accurately captures the way that off the cuff comments can become the basis of tortuous debate by people who really could be doing better things with their time.  It’s like Kafka with next to nothing at stake, and smallminded people prepared to defend that nothing to the hilt, so lost are they in the vacuity of institutional culture.  Pretty much the only heartfelt moment is when Jo Brand bursts out that she doesn’t give a shit about what happens to her, such is her loathing for the job.  It’s hard not to agree.

Given the premise of the show, it’s no surprise the patients barely get a look-in.  That’s entirely appropriate: the nurses are far too involved in numbingly tiresome interpersonal squabbles to have time to help any of their elderly charges in the recovery process.  The fact that this anti-drama is played out amid people dead and dying only adds to the sense that this very credible portrait of people within an unnecessarily large institution is as repulsive as it seems.  Which makes it all the more compelling to watch.  And if it causes you to question what you did at work today, so much the better.