Reviews

Britain's first medical soap, which was also the first of the nation's twice-weekly serials, (airing on Tuesday's and Friday's), 'Emergency - Ward 10' started life as 'Calling Nurse Roberts,' a six-week filler which went on to become one of the nations best loved programmes, reaching an average audience of 16 million people a week and 24 million at its peak.

Set in the fictitious surroundings of Oxbridge General Hospital, the series was an instant hit -with one million viewers tuning in to the first episode in February 1957, and running for ten years. In the process it made stars out of the actors and actresses who walked its wards, not least of all Jill Browne, who played pin-up nurse (later Sister) Carole Young. The series also won praise from the British Medical Association for allaying people's fear of hospitals, and in 1962 the then Minister of Health, Enoch Powell, congratulated the show on its 500th episode and commented on the useful job it did in reminding the public of the need for immunization.

Although the series was high in drama it had a very low mortality rate (patient deaths were strictly limited to five per year), concentrating more on the lives of the men and women who staffed the hospital. There were, of course, none of the graphically visual blood and guts on show that audiences expect from medical dramas today especially in shows such as 'Casualty' or 'The Golden Hour.' Nevertheless, although sedate by today's standard the series did set a landmark in 1964 and courted a considerable amount of controversy with its portrayal of an interracial relationship between surgeon Louise Mahler (Joan Hooley) and Doctor Giles Farmer (John White) which included the first ever on-screen interracial kiss.

The long list of patients who received treatment within 'EW10's' walls included Ian Hendry, Joanna Lumley and Albert Finney, all of whom went on to bigger and better things. There was a 1958 full-length feature film, 'Life in Emergency Ward 10,' and a brief spin-off series starring Richard Thorp, 'Call Oxbridge 2000,' but in 1967, with ratings beginning to fall, ATV supremo Lew Grade pulled the plug on the hospital's life support. Grade later admitted it was; 'one of the two biggest mistakes of my life.' In 1972 he tried to revive the series as 'General Hospital,' although this had far lesser impact on viewers.

An extension of the formula which made 'Emergency-Ward 10' Britain's most popular medical soap opera of the 1950s and 60s was foremost in the minds of those who planned Call Oxbridge 2000 and bought it into being, although their resulting efforts failed to capture the hearts of the Sunday afternoon viewing audience and after just one year the surgery at Oxbridge closed its doors for the final time.

Central figure in the programme was Dr. John Rennie who, as a Casualty Officer in the Oxbridge Hospital of the 'Ward 10' programme, had been a household favourite since he was first seen in the programme in September, 1959. As played by Richard Thorp, Dr. Rennie had left the hospital and gone to work in private practise with an uncle, working from a surgery on the outskirts of town. But he had not severed entirely his connections with the Ward 10 programme or it's mythical Oxbridge hospital.

Many of the established members of the 'Ward 10' cast played important parts in the story Call Oxbridge 2000 told, meeting patients whom Dr. Rennie and his uncle think need hospitalisation, or discussing with them the care of patients once they had left hospital. So the thread of hospital and family doctor relationship was maintained as was the continuity between the two series much like it was many years later when the BBC's highly successful 'Casualty' series spun off into 'Holby City.'

Such was the determination to keep the two programmes together that the first scripts for 'Call Oxbridge 2000' were written by one of the four scriptwriters who worked on 'Emergency-Ward 10.' The small core of professional medical advisers, producers and artistes who worked on 'E-W10' were made available for 'Call Oxbridge 2000' in order to add the authenticity of medical techniques and equipment that had been so successfully employed on its well tried stablemate.

The medical advisers, mindful of the great job which 'Ward 10' had done to give a better understanding in the minds of the general public of hospitals, what they do and who work in them, attempted to explain the work and lives of the great army of General Practitioners who had surgery's in almost any street or road in the towns and villages of the UK. And there were high hopes for the series. Not least in casting handsome Richard Thorp as the bachelor doctor who causes not a few flutters in the hearts of the more eligible of Oxbridge's young girls. However, in spite of an initial healthy viewing audience for 'Call Oxbridge 2000' within a year the series was beginning to run out of steam. And whilst 'Emergency-Ward 10' would continue until 1967, Dr Rennie was given an early retirement.