The first promotional photo of Daniel Radcliffe with Jon Hamm from the Sky miniseries, A Young Doctor's Notebook, was released this weekend with a feature and interviews with the two actors, who will portray the same leading character at different ages, where the younger (Dan) received advice from his elder counterpart (Hamm).

Dan admitted to The Guardian that the series will contain quite a lot of graphic medical scenes, including amputations in scenes from the series, which take place in 1917 Russia, from the first book by author Mikhail Bulgakov. The series starring the Harry Potter and Mad Men actors will debut on Sky in the UK beginning December 6, 2012.

The conceit of the comedy is that Radcliffe plays the young doctor, while Hamm, 41, is his older self, who tutors him and plays to his deepest insecurities. Hamm's version "voices all the neuroses of the young doctor, he becomes the voice in his head", explained Radcliffe.

Radcliffe's character is straight out of a top Moscow medical school and assigned to a remote hospital, where he is the only doctor for miles. He is often on the edge of panic, inexperienced in the realities of medicine.

"He has learned his medicine in books; he is confronted with the reality," said Radcliffe. Or, as his character observes by episode two, being a doctor is a mix of "butcher and seamstress".

Acted with a degree of slapstick and gore, the adaptation includes a tooth extraction from hell, an eruption of pus like a water cannon from an infected eye, and that horrific leg amputation, with a blunt saw.

Radcliffe admitted: "The amputation was rough, you see me hacking away." He added: "I am an obsessive Bulgakov fan, since I read the book when I was 18. It is so compelling and exciting. This is his first book, and he can't help his own crazed imagination coming through. At the first meeting Jon and I had, I said, yes, let's do it."

As for the gore, Radcliffe said: "That had to stay. It is pretty graphic in the book, and you can't do justice to it without that. By episode four we were running out of blood."

He also had the challenge of sharing a bath with Hamm, as he tries to cope with the Russian winter. "You know you are the envy of every woman in the world," Radcliffe said, "but the bath soon turns cold." Hamm, he said, is "really funny, one of the best technical actors around".

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