Tonight marks the return of ITV medical drama The Good Karma Hospital to our screens for its fourth season, and one of the show’s stars Amanda Redman has teased that her character will learn a few lessons in the new run.
Speaking to RadioTimes.com and other press ahead of the new series, Redman – who has played Dr Lydia Fonseca since the first series – explained, “She gets her comeuppance a couple of times, quite rightly. And so she has to learn how to deal with that. And then various things happen in her private life, which are quite exciting.”
She added that the new episodes will take the show in brand new directions, and also teased the addition to the cast of Harki Bhambra and Rebecca Ablack.
“She’s running the hospital on a shoestring budget and there are so many patients all the time, understaffed, underpaid, the usual,” she said.
“But the storylines are all very different to anything we’ve done before. But then luckily this time, we get two new members of staff, Harki [Bhambra], Rebecca [Ablack] are playing the characters. And they come in and they kind of alleviate the pressure somewhat, which is a good thing.”
Speaking about Lydia more generally, Redman said, “She’s a great character. She’s passionate, she’s warm. She’s all those things. But she’s also extremely flawed, which makes it far more interesting to play.”
And it appears that she’ll be making a new enemy in the new run, with Redman highlighting an exchange with a politician in one of the episodes.
“She comes up against this politician, really does come up against her, and they have a blinding, blinding row,” she explained. “And then what happens, it starts to affect what her decision is, and it starts to affect Greg and it starts to affect all sorts of things. And it’s her absolute anger what politicians find important and what someone like she finds important.”
Additional reporting by Abby Robinson
The Good Karma Hospital season 4 begins on ITV on Sunday 23rd January at 8pm. Seasons 1-3 are available to stream now on the ITV Hub. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.