The new 13-parter Critical (Tuesday, Sky 1, 9pm) is the most graphic television drama I have ever seen.

It is covered in blood; it gushes from tubes, it spurts from mouths, it spills from gaping wounds. And it looks real as well. In the old days, fake blood looked a little ketchupy; it was a little too red, like nail varnish, but the special effects guys have got better over the years and the blood in Critical is unpleasant, disturbing, shocking and real.

The sound guys are on top of their game as well. The first patient who's taken into the serious injury unit where Critical is set has broken his tibia so badly, it's sticking up through the flesh, and the doctors have to push it back into his leg. There is a deep, long cracking sound. They then have to cut into the flesh to operate on him and there's a squelching, mushy sound. I know these noises are made behind the scenes by a man with hand cream and a stick and dubbed on afterwards, but the level of realism is extremely high. Your disbelief is suspended for you.

And then it gets worse. The patient has to have a heart operation pronto which means cutting into his chest and prizing it open like a tin of beans. Ordinarily, the camera in a hospital drama would show us just a little and then cut away to the beads of sweat on the brow of the surgeon, but the Critical camera leans in low and, in the most extraordinary shot of the programme, travels the length of the deep wound in the man's chest. We then stand over him and watch, in bloody detail, as the operation proceeds.

Why have the makers of Critical done it this way? Partly, it's because the genre of hospital drama is on life support, and shows only the slightest signs of life in the likes of Casualty and Holby City, so something drastic had to be done to keep it going. And becoming more graphic, or more realistic, was probably the only option left. In the words of Critical's writer Jed Mercurio, he wanted to take the genre of hospital drama and, as he puts it, adrenalise it.

But I fear he has done the opposite and proceduralised it. Each episode focuses on an operation in the critical injuries unit. Specifically, it focuses on the golden hour - the first hour of an operation when there is most at stake - and goes into great detail about what is happening and why. The relationships between the staff and the stories of the patients - normally at the centre of hospital drama - are pushed to the side in favour of detailed, jargoned medical chat and procedure in the minutest, bloodiest detail.

This is fine for the first episode, because it's novel, but I've already seen next week's episode and it's very similar, which is going to be a problem. All the blood and guts may be impressive and shocking and prove how good Sky's special effects team is, but special effects, however good, never really keep us interested. Before long, the producers will have to mop up the blood and start telling us some good, strong stories about some living , breathing humans instead.