British cinema of the 1950s is often accused of being smug and there’s something to it, but it's not the whole story. These are the light-hearted episodic adventures of four medical students which became a massive hit. Director Ralph Thomas thought this was partly due to casting (especially Dirk Bogarde and Kenneth More, who team very well together - Bogarde as the handsome serious one, ideal for girls to dream about and to be a straight man; Moore to be less handsome but wacky), partly because it was one of the first films to poke gentle fun at medicine.
It is a good natured film, very much with a "school" feel -you can muck around a bit, push the boundaries, get really into sport and steal a mascot, the nurses are like girls from a girls school (i.e. targets), occasionally you might get one past the stern teachers (Geoffrey Keene, James Robertson Justice), but if you really get busted you’ll get detention, and when you leave you'll be ready to be a man.
The film is a bit more multicultural than you might think - one of the four guys is Welsh (a rugby fanatic who won't have anything to do with women), More has a French girlfriend (and it's implied they have an adult relationship - and she seems to really like hanging around his other friends), women keep trying to seduce Bogarde, there is a black nurse (unfortunately there is a horrid racist gag where Donald Sinden gives flowers to a bunch of nurses including... they cut to this... the black one). Muriel Pavlov is pretty as the love interest - a plot not really resolved, thereby enabling Bogarde to be single for the many sequels.
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