Casualty

Casualty returned tonight, set in the first peak of the virus. The cast went from Holby's first covid case to 90 days into the lockdown. I haven't necessarily made this thread to encourage discussion but to highly recommend it to all members. It's an incredibly powerful watch.

Yes. It was very good.

I haven't seen Casualty for years and years- is it always shot and broadcast with that "film" motion look now, and with the black bars?

The black bars is common with how Holby City filmed their first episode back.

They also dropped the closing theme and went for a slow pull back of the site and just background noise. Certainly added to the atmosphere.

The show adopted a more film-like look back in 2007, but they have only used a 2:1 aspect ratio in this episode and "Code Orange" - the episode from spring 2020 that was postponed to September.

Well that was grim. Although maybe now is the correct time for it to be seen, to make us remember what is happening in A&Es everywhere as we speak.

One of the best episodes of Casualty in quite a few years I thought! Really well done and dare I say potentially quite a useful way of reminding people why the current restrictions are necessary (even if they've been implemented far too late and in quite a ham fisted fashion, but that's a different thread...).

I'm usually far too squeamish to watch Casualty and the like but felt it was important to watch this. Excellently done and such an important story to tell, and sometimes an hour of drama can be more effective than months of news reports and documentaries.

A grim, but well written episode which portrayed what it has been like for NHS workers during the first lockdown. I was glad to see it was a wholly drama episode without any of the soapy stuff. (You can still do light as with the TikTok scene)

When a story has been written and performed so well by the cast, you forget about the social distancing techniques used unlike Holby City and EastEnders where it's so obvious.

I don't expect the quality of the episodes will be as good for the remaining 29 episodes this series, but well down to the team in Cardiff for proving that Casualty can be once again an excellent drama series.

Although completely unrealistic considering it is meant to be the A and E. Would have been a lot more realistic to have split the staff into 2 distinct teams with some treating Covid and the others dealing with non-Covid patients (ideally including things like cancers and suicide attempts) as well as exploring the guilt felt by those working on the (largely quiet) non-covid side about leaving the exposure to others.

It was implied that there were other staff doing that but in lockdown 1 not much other stuff was accepted compared to the situation now which is seemingly worse but maybe in a different way cause we know a lot more about how you deal with covid now back in lockdown 1 we didn’t and I completely applaud casualty for doing this and having the balls to kill a major character off in the episode as well to show as many sides of the nhs in the pandemic so far. Let’s hope the rest of the series are at a better standard than in previous series even if it so well done and not just a soapy mess - fingers crossed and also fingers crossed for the nhs until a d beyond the point we have control of covid whenever that is

This episode was written by Kevin Rundle who also wrote the powerful EastEnders episode on New Year's Day which looked at historical alleged child abuse allegations.

Sorry but A and E (which the department which Casualty is supposedly set in) was the one department that continued to operate for Non-Covid patients throughout the first lock down, and in many cases was actually completely removed from the Covid admissions process (in order to reduce the risk of exposure for those patients with other conditions). It is simply inaccurate to portray a picture in which A and E departments were overrun with Covid cases and were the location of multiple Covid deaths each day when in reality the situation in A and Es was largely one of empty waiting rooms with patients being seen and sent home in record time. The BBC would have been entirely justified to have shown this type of picture in an episode of Holby City as that programme focusses on areas of the hospital that would actually have been at breaking point and repurposed for Covid, or to have had a proportion of the Casualty staff shown in such roles with others dealing with the Non-Covid patients, but to suggest the entirity of A and E departments were overrun with Covid to the extent that Non-Covid patients were not being treated or were being exposed unnecessarily shows a lack of understanding and could also prevent people with other urgent but treatable conditions from A and E from the inaccurate picture that the A and E department in hospitals was overrun with Covid.