Hospital life, death and hanky panky, are injected with a massive dose of suspense when doctor Genevieve Bujold unviels a murder-for-body-parts conspiracy.
Michael Douglas is Bujold's doctor boyfriend, who she suspects may be in on the plot and Tom Selleck stars as a bit-part beefcake patient with desirable organs.
A chiller with an edge, Coma capitalised superbly on the post-Watergate paranoia rampaging through the States, playing on the fear that your killer doesn't always come bearing an axes or chainsaws, but as a smiling doctor in a white coat.
Crichton's past in the medical profession help him to create a believable setting and cast of characters from a game adaptaiton of Robin Cook's successful novel, almost two decades before his ER hit the small screen.
And Bujold gives the finest performance of her career, closely resembling Sigourney Weaver's Ripley (Alien) as a woman forced to be strong beyond her wildest imagination, until a rather mundane plot twist does its best to send her from heroine to damsel in distress.