''The Fragile Heart'' is a

BAFTA The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA, ) is an independent trade association and charity that supports, develops, and promotes the arts of film, television and video games in the United Kingdom. In addition to its annual awa ...

award-winning

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

medical drama A medical drama is a Television film, television movie or film in which events center upon a hospital, clinic, doctor's office, a paramedic, or any other medical topic or environment. Most recent medical drama (film and television), dramatic progra ...

television

series Series may refer to: People with the name * Caroline Series (born 1951), English mathematician, daughter of George Series * George Series (1920–1995), English physicist Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Series, the ordered sets used i ...

created by Paula Milne and first aired on

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

from 6 to 20 November 1996. The series was nominated for the

Royal Television Society The Royal Television Society (RTS) is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present, and future. It is the oldest television society in the world. It currently has fourteen r ...

award for Best Drama Serial.RTS Awards Archive
(February 2017), p. 19 (accessed 2017-02-27).

Story

Edgar Pascoe (

Nigel Hawthorne Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne (5 April 1929 – 26 December 2001) was an English actor. He is known for his stage acting and his portrayal of Sir Humphrey Appleby, the permanent secretary in the 1980s sitcom ''Yes Minister'' and the Cabinet Secre ...

) is a highly successful and charismatic cardiac surgeon. Pre-eminent in his field, he is the embodiment of the upper echelons of medicine: urbane, assured, supremely confident in his own abilities. But he is not infallible - either in the operating theatre or in his private life with his divided family. Edgar's wife Lileth ( Dearbhla Molloy), a dedicated and compassionate country GP, is increasingly drawn to the holistic arts of healing still practiced in the East, but scorned by purveyors of Western technology. As their professional ideals and methods clash, so inevitably does their relationship. Nicola ( Helen McCrory) is Edgar's favoured child, ruthless and unscrupulous in her ambition to emulate her illustrious father. But it is in China, heading a medical delegation, that Edgar is confronted by an ethical dilemma over the abuse of human rights and is forced into a painful moral awakening which will prove to affect every area of his life.

Cast

Award

* BAFTA Awards 1997 ** Won Best Actor:

** Nominated Best Drama Serial: Brian Eastman, Patrick Lau, Paula Milne ** Best Editing (Fiction/Entertainment): Neil Thomson * Banff Television Festival 1997 ** Won Best Mini-Series : Paula Milne, Carnival Film & Television * Royal Television Society, UK 1997 ** Nominated Best Drama Serial ** Nominated Best Actor - Female : Dearbhla Molloy * London Film Critics' Circle ** Nominated Actress of the Year : Helen McCrory

Home Media

The Fragile Heart was released on DVD on 8 October 2018.

References

External links

*
''The Fragile Heart''
at the

FilmAffinity FilmAffinity is a movie recommendations website created in 2002 in Madrid, Spain, by the film critic Pablo Kurt Verdú Schumann and the programmer Daniel Nicolás. In 2016, the site listed 125,000 movies and series and had 556,000 reviews writte ...

1996 British television series debuts 1996 British television series endings Channel 4 television dramas Channel 4 miniseries Television shows set in England Television shows set in Hong Kong 1990s British medical drama television series 1990s British television miniseries British English-language television shows {{UK-tv-prog-stub