Making the jump from being a junior doctor to being a screenwriter is one that a passionate storyteller like Grace Ofori-Attah hadn't actually initially envisioned.
"It all feels surreal," Ofori-Attah admits, saying that the fact we're sat talking about her show over Zoom just adds to it.
This time around, the show centres on Tom Hughes's Dr James Ford, a psychiatric registrar who appears committed to his work but is torn between two patients, leading to consequences nobody could have foreshadowed.
It was an exciting opportunity, Ofori-Attah tells me, to move from A&E to the world of psychiatry, one in which she obviously has incredible first-hand experience of.
"I think it is a much more nuanced speciality. Mental health is an area that isn't often depicted on TV, and I felt like we had a real opportunity to depict severe enduring mental illness accurately and really show what it's like to be in a psychiatric medical setting," she says.
Rosie's a mother juggling the demands of a newborn and toddler who attends a routine post-natal check-up. But it's there that Dr Sophia Hernandez (Selin Hizli) recommends her for a psychiatric evaluation by Dr Ford, the start of a story that has a tragic outcome and shows the degrees of mental illness.
"I really wanted to show that this can happen to anybody. I think sometimes there's a sort of othering of people who have severe chronic mental illness, but it really can happen to anybody and it just needs to be managed with compassion and care," Ofori-Attah explains.
As Ofori-Attah tells me, it was something her own psychiatrist friends had worries about, wondering how they would be able to manage these patients by themselves.
"Not because they are 'violent', but because what's going on in their heads is frightening for them and then you have people who are trying to contain it and it can escalate, as you see in the situation," Ofori-Attah explains.
"You have a tiny woman who seems very calm and a bit placid earlier on, who later on is so aggressive, she could take them all out. I really was clear with World [Productions] that it's not an exaggeration to show her escalating like this.
On the other hand, we also have the story of Tony, a psychotic woman who is heavily pregnant and who Ford's team are planning to section. Her story, like Rosie's, is one that is incredibly heartbreaking, but in a different way.
"Tony is a really key part of the story," Ofori-Attah tells me. "In setting up the beginning with these two patients, Tony's always the one who just seems to get the raw deal.
"She's in this horrible situation which you see at the beginning, she's being taken advantage of. The way the obstetric team talk about her, it's so disrespectful, and what I hope the audiences will take away from it is that, even though Dr Ford might come across as a bit self-assured, he has Tony's best interests at heart. He's one of the only people who's really advocating for her."
"You've got these patients who often don't have capacity and you need a really compassionate doctor to want to treat them and advocate for them, not just treat them and get them out the door because they often do stay in hospital for a long time.
"I don't know what people who are watching it think when they hear that, but that is something that happens a lot in UK hospitals. I'm interested to know whether people say, 'As if that would ever happen.' But it happens.
Over the course of five episodes, we not only uncover more about each of these patient's cases but also more about Dr Ford who, actually, was initially written by Ofori-Attah as a woman.
"Actually, at first I thought 'no' because in psychiatry, there's quite an interesting gender split. You tend to have quite a lot of female doctors working in it, so it's quite unusual to have a character like Dr Ford within psychiatry.
Jessica Layde's Bernadette is the junior doctor working on Dr Ford's ward, and is a character that isn't far from Ofori-Attah's own image. While the series writer does admit that Bernadette is not dissimilar to season 1's Ramya (Priyanka Patel), she says that Bernadette has elements of her own junior doctor experience when she was "less aware of what stuff was going on".
It's very high-pressured and involves juggling a lot of things, with the hectic night in episode 1 even being a very simplified version of what Ofori-Attah had initially plotted out.
Having to streamline it was something that initially worried Ofori-Attah, in case viewers didn't quite grasp just how busy Dr Ford's shift is, but it's something that has still been expertly achieved in the final version, something she's very happy about.
"They try and teach you from medical school that one of the key roles of a doctor is to be able to prioritise. You have to be able to make a risk assessment yourself of who is the most at-risk person and who needs your attention and care. But in the moment, it's very difficult. I really wanted to show that you have these doctors who are trying to navigate all of that on their own at night," she says.
Although these shows are crafted for entertainment, there's always something serious to sink your teeth into; Ofori-Attah just never wants to be "too preachy with it".
"I love a story where you can imagine that happening to you. Like in Playing Nice, the idea that could happen to you or that you could be the child that that's happened to, I think it just adds another layer of entertainment and engagement.
Joking about doing something lighthearted and fun, Ofori-Attah says a romcom or period piece would be nice to do later down the line. "Some Dickens to adapt, where it's like a jolly Dickens, not like a deep, dark city in Victorian England," she says.
"I am a Black female writer, but I was born in Glasgow and I grew up in Yorkshire. Since starting to write TV, I've talked about setting some of those shows in places where you have a Black family and they are kind of in isolation in a bit of the UK – people aren't so keen," she reveals.
Why is there that initial reticence from the industry to tell these kinds of diverse regional stories, I ask Ofori-Attah? "I think it's a very risk-averse business," she shares.
"I think there's an understanding of a certain type of depiction for TV, and I think it would be really nice to expand that because there are people all over the country. I feel like those would be really interesting diverse stories because you do get a lot of pushback sometimes from audiences where they'll say, 'Why is this entire show for ethnic minorities? Because nothing in my community looks like that.'
Ofori-Attah says that it's precisely those kinds of 'fish-out-of-water' tales that she likes, citing the many ethnic minority families and communities that live all over the UK but that we don't get to see represented onscreen.
"I love the regional stuff. Even with Playing Nice, we talked about diversity when we were setting that up. We picked Cornwall because it's the poorest county in the country. It's very beautiful, but there are lots of problems there.
In her work so far, Ofori-Attah has crafted engaging series that do all shine a light on important and often serious subjects, but it's clear that representation and diversity continue to be an important facet of her own writing and craft.
"If you're watching TV or growing up watching TV and you don't see people who look like you, you don't understand those lives – it can be quite alienating. But also, if you start to see just even a few people who do look like you, it's a way of making people understand other cultures, other ways of life, expanding and broadening people's horizons, without forcing it on them.
Malpractice season 2 will debut on ITV1 and ITVX on Sunday 4th May, airing at 9pm, while season 1 is available in full on ITVX now.
Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
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