When the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport found itself at the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic, staff at the Intensive Care Unit began to film their own lives, in and out of work. The result is a powerful new documentary showing life in critical care as the virus threatens to overwhelm the NHS.

Filmed in the summer of 2019 before coronavirus struck, the series follows the staff on the Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, south Wales.

On this ward, life hangs in the balance. Our society is ageing and the staff on the ICU treat a high number of elderly patients, but the older and more frail a person is, the harder it is to overcome a critical illness.

Filmed in the summer of 2019 before coronavirus struck, Critical: Inside Intensive Care is a powerful and moving observational documentary series following the staff on the Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, south Wales. These staff are now on the frontline fighting the virus, but in this series we see the extraordinary work that they were doing before the present crisis.

On this ward, life hangs in the balance. Staff treat a wide variety of patients with a range of illnesses. In this episode, we meet some whose symptoms are linked to their lifestyle, and others who prove more difficult to diagnose. One man's strange symptoms are a medical mystery leaving the doctors scratching their heads.

Sometimes, despite all the medical and mechanical organ support that ICU can offer, there is little staff can to do help those in the most desperate circumstances.

The Royal Gwent Hospital serves a diverse area, from the city streets of Newport to the rural valleys of south Wales. Unemployment and social deprivation are high here, and this can be reflected in the patients treated on the ICU. Caring for those suffering with the effects of alcoholism and drug abuse is common, while the staff also encounter an increasing number of homeless patients.

Critical or intensive care departments look after the sickest people in Wales and attempt to bring them back from the brink. For the doctors and nurses working in this field of medicine, death is a part of life - one in four people do not survive intensive care.

Every day decisions are made on how to treat people, how to prolong life and ultimately when to let a life end. Now an intensive care unit in Wales has given documentary film-makers the rare and exclusive opportunity to observe an area of medicine seldom seen.

With access to all aspects of the life-changing decisions made by doctors, patients and their families, this powerful and emotional documentary offers an intimate portrayal of life in intensive care.