Extraordinary Portraits | Preview (BBC One)

To mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the NHS, a brand new series of Extraordinary Portraits sees comedian, musician, and art lover Bill Bailey pair a selection of extraordinary NHS workers with some of the UK's most celebrated portrait artists.

The six artists are challenged with turning the personal and powerful experiences of the doctors, porters, surgeons and nurses into compelling portraits. In episode one, sculptor Nick Elphick meets Martin, an inspirational trauma surgeon at one of London’s busiest hospitals.

Martin treats an average of two stabbings a day, and two shootings a week. A statistic made even more shocking because most of his patients are still children. His work outside the operating theatre is also making a difference - he spearheads a violence-reduction initiative that’s seen the numbers of patients re-admitted to hospital with a stab wound fall from 45 percent to around four percent.

Nick Elphick is a Welsh figurative sculptor based in Llandudno. He works in a variety of mediums and scales, but always with the same aim - not just to replicate the human form, but to express a deeper meaning within his pieces.

Will this master of human form be able to encapsulate something of the multi-faceted surgeon?

Extraordinary Portraits begins Monday 17th July on BBC One and iPlayer.