Casualty

Yes it was in fact a very good episode of Casualty, much in the way that the first episode of Holby City to deal with the pandemic was also well done. Having current-world social and political issues integrated into the episode certainly allowed it to excel in the way that made the earlier series of Casualty work so well rather than have it fall back on the bland and soapy storylines we have had of late. While I don't believe this quality will be retained for the remainder of the series, this episode has certainly made clear the opportunity to represent the harsh and grim realities of the pandemic through the eyes of those who work in the NHS.

Ideally Casualty would revert to being a drama series, which would keep Holby as the soapier sister series. But if you've watched older episodes of Holby, even those have more plots that have NHS bureaucracy in them than now which is even more soapier than Casualty.

How anyone can watch an episode like that and think "but A&E units are empty at the moment" is beyond me. Just callous, rude and insensitive.

It is also important to remember a show like Casualty, along with virtually all emergency service dramas, focuses on one shift of staff. There is always the implications that other staff are around off screen. Secondly this is a story that needed to be told, and for the BBC Casualty was by far the best way to tell it.

Even if there is some truth in A&E departments being quieter with non-COVID cases staff in A&E have been redeployed to deal with the pandemic, and naturally areas of A&E will have been converted into areas dealing with COVID patients, whether in an A&E environment or beyond that. Casualty has always had patients dying in what would be ICU, so this episode was no different in that regards.

A bit of dramatic licence is always going to occur in dramas but this episode was uncomfortably based on the thousands of factual accounts we've been hearing from NHS staff over the last 10 months.

Well said, Brekkie.
If they knew that they would get a lot of bad press over it, you know some anti-BBC newspapers just want to run the non-story 'ANGER as BBC shows empty A&E departments in prime time'...

If some viewers are still not getting that Casualty is not a fly on the wall doc, then eventually we'll end up, like some adverts have to put the caption 'this is a commercial' on it, then BBC will have to fade up 'This is a drama' at regular intervals...

Ultimately Casualty, Holby and EastEnders have done storylines that have an important PSB remit. Casualty's last series dealt with dementia, Holby has dealt with cancer and EastEnders is currently running a story about historical child abuse.

4.3m last night, second of the night to The Masked Singer (5.25m). Interesting the BBC have opted to keep The Wheel in the later slot and move Casualty earlier than it normally airs - must have been it's earliest Saturday airing for quite some tie last night.

Casualty got 3.3m last night, not 4.3m.

Looks like TVZone mixed it up with Catchphrase.

As an A&E doctor I’ve just watched my first ever episode of #casualty (seriously) after seeing last nights trending on Twitter. Holy shit. They nailed it. Watch it. Let it sink in. Then stay at home. Seriously - stay at home.

— Den Langhor (@DLGDen) January 3, 2021

Drama aside, very nicely done shot at the end pulling out from the ED to show the rest of "Holby", given that the actual buildings are on an island surrounded by water and docks. Does anyone know if the city shown is Bristol, the former stand-in for Holby?

It just deepens the mystery as to just how the city-center ED and the Holby City wards with their leafy-suburb roadways are all meant to be in the same building, though...

The Holby City wards are now on another hospital site I think, its been mentioned at one point. (Yes, I know this doesnt make sense with the crossovers)

People are still getting transferred "up" from the ED and there's the occasional stairwell cameo so I think they're still meant to be on the same site in-universe.

Here's the final shot which shows that more of it is Roath Lock than I thought. Looks like they just covered up the waterways with CGI buildings and trees:



I suppose that could be the back of the the Holby City building just to the right and behind the ED, though it's definitely not the actual Borehamwood building.