Review: 'A Young Doctor's Notebook' - Season Two Premiere

There are some shows that are a bit difficult to describe in a couple of sentences. Sometimes the premise is too sprawling, but often it's the case that the show is enough of a mess that you could dissect it for paragraphs and still not capture its essence.

The latter is certainly the case with season two of 'A Young Doctor's Notebook," which premieres this week in the U.K. on Sky Arts and in the U.S. on Ovation next fall. The comedy/drama/dramedy stars Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm as young and older versions of the same character: a drug-addled and lovestruck doctor laboring away in post-revolutionary Russia.

Season one began in 1934 with the doctor (Hamm) recounting his struggles as he went from being straight out of medical school to an assignment in a small village in rural Russia. He's quickly disenchanted with the people and his efforts to stop a syphilis epidemic are slowed by superstitions of the local peasants. Bored and frustrated, he experiments with morphine and soon finds himself relying on it more and more to get through the day. The younger version of the doctor is played by Daniel Radcliffe, with the older version (Hamm) shadowing Radcliffe as he recounts the tales and his eventual mistakes. The surreal premise sometimes found Hamm engaged in slapstick tussles with his younger self and other times as a longterm mophine-addicted sad sack awaiting his arrest.

The new season finds Radcliffe's young doctor being overseen by Hamm's older version as he battles his now crippling morphine addiction. That addiction is a problem for a lot of reasons, especially since someone is coming to inventory his supplies and he's been using them to keep himself self-medicated. Luckily, the person doing the inventory is shot three times traveling through the midst of the coming Russian Civil War. But that only delays the eventual day of reckoning. At the same time, Hamm's character now seems clean and focused, which makes the four new episodes even more off-kilter.

But if the young doctor has one positive in his life, it comes in the form of the beautiful aristocrat Natasha, played by newcomer Margaret Clunie. She reminds him of a life that he could have, and that realization brings even more turmoil to his life. Based on Hamm's version of the doctor, it's clear that he eventually finds a way to get clean. But based on his behavior in season two, it's not going to be a quick transition.

Season one was based on the short stories of Russian writer and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov, while season two is merely 'inspired by his other writings.' That distinction is likely to be lost on viewers, few of whom will have ever had read the original stories.

But no matter what the source material, season two is just as oddly awkward and peculiar as season one. It's not exactly funny enough to be a comedy but it's too sardonic to be accurately described as a drama. It's a peculiar yet often captivating show, though it's one of those projects that probably wouldn't have happened if Radcliffe and Hamm weren't participating.

I can't say that "A Young Doctor's Notebook" is for everyone. It's dark, sometimes depressing and joyless. The acting is superb and while the scripts seem to be more a British version of Russian literature than true Russian storytelling, that change probably makes the stories a bit more accessible. And by "a bit" I mean only a very small amount.

But if you want to be challenged by a show, if you want to walk away from your TV not quite sure if you should love or hate what you just watched, then "A Young Doctor's Notebook" is for you.