Jed Mercurio

Jed Mercurio (born 1966) is a British television writer, producer, director and novelist. He is reported to be one of the few British script-writers to work as a U.S.-style showrunner. A former hospital physician and RAF officer, Mercurio has been ranked among UK television's leading writers by TV-industry magazine Broadcast.

His chief works for television are the series Line of Duty, Bodies (based on his 2002 novel), The Grimleys and Cardiac Arrest. His books are Bodies (2002), Ascent (2007), American Adulterer (2009) and, for children, The Penguin Expedition (2003).

Mercurio was born in Nelson, Lancashire but grew up in Cannock, Staffordshire. While an undergraduate at the University of Birmingham Medical School, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force and underwent pilot training with the intention of specialising in aviation medicine. Instead, during subsequent practice as a hospital physician, Mercurio answered an advertisement in the British Medical Journal and, despite negligible writing experience, scripted the BBC medical drama Cardiac Arrest under the pseudonym John MacUre. Subsequently he retired from medicine and the military to pursue a writing career under his own name.

Mercurio's writing debut, Cardiac Arrest (1994–96), caused controversy due to its revisionist depiction of hospital life, though the series was twice nominated in the Best Original Drama category by the Writers' Guild of Great Britain and topped a poll of UK medical professionals as the most realistic medical drama of all time. Mercurio served as medical advisor on the second series of Cardiac Arrest, which he cites as his apprenticeship in producing/directing.

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