The new season “Charité is dedicated to medical utopias. And yet it remains, in the best sense of the word, the clinic of the Black Forest's future.
Looking to the future: CHARITÉ is a six-part series as part of the ARD theme day “The Medicine of Tomorrow” Photo: ARD/MDR/ARD Degeto/Arte/Ufa Fiction/Armanda Claro
There is currently a new debate about whether the measures against the coronavirus were necessary and ARD is asking this question to a series of hospitals: “The heat continues and you have been denying people access to water for three days. “When will the beaches reopen?” The Minister of Health in 2049 does not know very well what to respond to the journalist.
Dr. Maral Safadi, a Charité luminary, has discovered a new bacteria in a patient who was destroyed by it and was previously found in the North Sea. That's why the beaches have to be closed. The investigation is underway, the policy is lagging behind.
This framework of action holds the fourth season of “Charité” together, it does nothing else. You don't even need it. Will there be a cure? Are the Germans allowed to return to their North Sea? Irrelevant. The field of medicine, power and morality is much broader than that of a paleobacteria. And fortunately “Charité” also demonstrates this.
Under the scorching sun, angry people protest in front of the clinic against a medical reform that further harms disadvantaged people, because only those who have stayed in shape receive the best possible treatment. Dr. Safadi advised on this, so the reform is also testing his relationship with his mother. She is a surgeon and is in the operating room when suddenly the computer stops working.
Recovery is in confrontation
The health insurance company has withdrawn coverage for an organ transplant for a diabetic woman. She is hardworking, takes care of the family as a mother and grandmother, keeps everyone together emotionally and organizationally and yes, sometimes she just eats a piece of chocolate. And the surgeon? She begins with her first illegal surgery. She will soon start the Shadow Clinic.
While the first three seasons of “Charité” delved into the past of German medical history, the new one is dedicated to the future. People with complete body paralysis can play sports in digital worlds, epileptics can live without seizures with chips in their heads.
The series hopes that the audience will have all these visions. And yet, in the best of senses, it remains a clinic for the future of the Black Forest: the solution to recovery is often enough to accept one's own family, one's fears and one's own principles. “Charité” analyzes social conditions, partnership models, and political and economic connections in medicine.
“Charité”, fourth season, starting April 5 at the ARD Media Library, on television starting April 9