Medical spin-off’s now a firm television favourite
What’s the diagnosis? We look at the birth of medical drama Holby City 20 years ago
FIRST there was Casualty and then along came Holby City. The BBC hospital admitted its first patients 20 years ago on January 12, 1999, and has been dispensing medical treatment ever since. The Casualty spin-off began with the focus firmly on the lives of the medical staff and patients at Holby City General Hospital’s busy cardiac unit.
The medical team was led by George Irving as suave consultant surgeon Anton Meyer with EastEnders actor Michael French as his Registrar Nick Jordan. The original cast also included Angela Griffin as staff nurse Jasmine Hopkins, Lisa Faulkner as senior house officer Victoria Merrick and Nicola Stephenson as staff nurse Julie Fitzjohn.
Holby City’s home is at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire and they moved in with hospital wards and beds when the Top Of The Pops staff moved out.
Nearly 10 million viewers watched the first series and, 20 years later, Holby City is now broadcast 52 weeks of the year.
There have also been many guest appearances
over the years including a pre-Christmas cameo by broadcaster Reverend Richard Coles last month which saw the pop star-turnedvicar playing a vicar officiating a wedding ceremony in the long-running drama.
He joked: “Thrilled to be invited finally to exercise my ministry of healing at
Holby City, which has been my healthcare provider of choice for 20 years.”
Tony McHale and producer and writer Mal Young, who went on to work on Doctors and Doctor Who, were behind the creation of the hospital drama which highlighted life and death storylines.
Tony McHale was the drama’s lead writer and wrote the very first episode entitled Whose Heart Is It Anyway? It dealt with a donor heart and two patients in urgent need of a life-saving transplant operation. It was left to surgeon Anton Meyer to make the final choice on who to save.
Medical experts have been employed from day one to offer advice on all the Holby City scripts to make them as medically accurate as possible and the first series ended with a two-parter called Staying Alive which saw nurse Jasmine stabbed through the heart and needing an emergency operation.