An ambitious autumn offering announced by RTÉ yesterday in its new schedule is the five-part observational documentary series Keeping Ireland Alive: The health service in a day. Fifty camera crews positioned themselves in hospitals, clinics and surgeries on May 31st and for 24 hours recorded what they saw.

In some cases advance research told them what they might expect, that somebody was, for example, coming in for an kidney transplant or a patient was leaving to go to respite – and so back stories could be teased out and advance permissions sought. In others – 40 per cent of the stories featured – it was a question of seeing what came through the doors. Four episodes were planned but there was enough material for five for the project which had a budget north of €500,000.

It's a bought-in format, owned by ITV Studios. The BBC made the UK version three years ago – Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a day. Then Obamacare was in the news, with the US president's attempt to make healthcare available to all citizens viewed by his critics as little short of a dangerous socialist plot. And so the BBC series – in eight parts – had a quiet confidence about it, a humble brag appeal that said, see for all its faults this cradle-to-grave health service is beloved, the envy of the world, it might need adjustments but not radical surgery.

The Irish version doesn't have that feel-good luxury. The health service stories that make the headlines, current affairs programmes, Dáil debates and radio phone-ins tend to be mostly negative – and so the challenge for Keeping Ireland Alive is to convince viewers that this snapshot hasn't been put through a pretty filter.

Media attention

It will be watched by an audience who reasonably assumes that anyone who submits to media attention, from a Hollywood star to the managing director of a widget company, comes with an agenda of what they want to say or show and more crucially what they don’t.

And recent fly-on-the-wall TV series haven't exactly been coolly observational. The Shelbourne and The Gleneagle came across as fawning advertisements for the hotels; and as soon as senior gardaí appeared on screen in The Guards, their on-message contributions transformed the otherwise gritty series into a deadening public service announcement.

For this more complex operation, RTÉ optioned the format, negotiated access in principal with the Health Service Executive and put the production out to tender. Independent Pictures – who made the excellent observational series Crumlin about the children's hospital – won the pitch.

Its managing director, Conor Moloney, says: “There was no pressure from the HSE for any hospital to take part – or not take part . . . and to be fair the HSE hasn’t sought out detailed information on who we’ve been talking to.”

Access arrangements

The HSE isn’t as all-encompassing as the NHS so separate access arrangements had to be negotiated by Moloney with several hospitals and service providers which are be HSE funded but not directly controlled by it.

It might seem surprising that a corporate behemoth such as the HSE agreed to hand over control of the finished product but that, according to Moloney, is what happened. “There was no interference,” he says, “The HSE had a courtesy viewing [when the film was complete]”.

Some patients and others filmed were also given courtesy viewings on the same understanding that the only things that could be changed were factual errors.

The series, says Moloney “does present a positive view of the individuals in the health service”. Red-button issues, from overcrowding to lack of resources are dealt with, he says, but all through “the positive human stories told from the point of view of the patient”.

Moloney gives the example of the “treatment post code lottery” seen in the experience of a woman on “the cancer bus”, the Kerry Link that brings patients undergoing chemotherapy from their homes in Kerry to Cork for treatment – a gruelling four-hour round trip.

As for access and editorial control he says: “We had a big honest conversations at the start. We needed editorial freedom to tell the stories. It’s a not a soft soap.”

Keeping Ireland Alive: The health service in a day starts on August 29th on RTÉ One