Holby City: Medical History

Critics often attack drama’s such as The Bill and Holby City for being populated by ex-soap stars so we’ve decided to put that to the test. Over the next few weeks we’ll being taking a look at the different casts of our continuing drama’s to see how many of them really are ex-soap stars.

Our second look at ex-soap stars populating our continuing drama’s is BBC’s Holby City. The long running medical drama has, at times, been accused of relying on ex-soap stars to populate its wards of staff and patients. But as with The Bill we shall only be taking a look at the regular cast members and not the guest stars.

• Tina Hobley – plays Chrissie Williams. Tina Hobley is currently the longest serving actress on Holby City. During the 1990’s she had a regular role in Coronation Street.

• Paul Bradley – plays Elliot Hope. Still fondly remembered for his role as Nigel in EastEnders during the 1990’s.

•  Luke Roberts – plays Joseph Byrne. Played Ryan Samson in the short lived 2003 revival of Crossroads alongside Jane Asher.

• Phoebe Thomas – plays Maria Kendall. Played creepy Holly Curran in Night And Day, between 2001 and 2003, and Jane Hughes in Family Affairs in 2005. Thomas also had a recurring role in the first season of C4 drama Teachers.

• Patsy Kensit – plays Faye Morton. A well known film actress her previous soap role was as bitchy Sadie King in Emmerdale.

And it’s not just ex-soap stars that litter the cast, according to critics, but also stars of other drama shows such as Casualty or The Bill.

• Rosie Marcel – plays Jac Naylor. Marcel’s previous drama roles include The Bill and The Vice and also Bombshell – the ITV army drama series yet to be shown on UK screens despite being filmed several years ago.

• Duncan Pow – plays Linden Cullen. Starred in Sky One’s Football drama, Dream Team.

• Stella Gonet – plays Jayne Grayson. Best known for her role in The House of Elliot in the early 1990’s.

Holby City has a small regular cast compared to The Bill with a cast of nineteen against thirty. Five cast members of Holby City have previously appeared in soaps and three have appeared in high profile drama’s. In all eight are familiar faces to fans of soap and drama compared to thirteen for The Bill, which has a far larger cast. How will this compare with Casualty? Find out soon.