How Jed Mercurio went from being a fully qualified doctor to creating Bodyguard and Line of Duty

Slate

"I was very fortunate that I never really had to make the decision," says Mercurio, whose first show he created was 1994-1996 BBC medical drama Cardiac Arrest. "I was working as a resident in internal medicine when my first show was on the air and then it got ordered for a second season. So I ended up taking a sabbatical to work on the second season, and then I just kept extending that sabbatical. I never really felt that I was turning my back on medicine. I always thought that there was an opportunity to go back if TV didn’t work out. As the years went by and I got more involved in TV and farther away from medicine, it became clear that I was on a different career path."