General Hospital – The Original Midlands Hospital Saga
This week Doctors celebrates ten years on air, so lets take a look back to the original daytime medical saga, from ITV, General Hospital.
Today the BBC reign supreme with medical sagas but it was ITV which pioneered the format in the UK with the first British hospital saga, Emergency Ward 10, launching in 1957. It ran for a decade, but was dropped after an unsuccessful revamp saw the Oxbridge Hospital, near London, go from a cosy story of the everyday lives of the medical staff and occasional patient problem to an Americanised fast-paced serial which didn’t fare well with viewers.
Emergency Ward 10 was frothy in its original format, cosy most of the time, but it did occasionally break into taboo storytelling – from suicidal patents flinging themselves out of windows to the famous interracial relationship between surgeon Louise Mahler and Doctor Giles Farmer, leading to controversy when a scene of the pair kissing was recorded. It wasn’t afraid to lean into variety too. ATV presenter (and later actress) Noele Gordon even appeared as herself in one 1964 edition involving a hospital open day.
Boss of ATV Network , Lord Lew Grade, pulled the plug on the Oxbridge after 966 half hour episodes, 50 one hour installments, two spin-off series’ – Call Oxbridge 2000, 24 Hour Call and a feature film released in 1959. Grade later admitted axing Emergency Ward 10 had been a mistake.
Learning from that failed attempt to make Emergency Ward 10 more appealing to the US market in 1972 production company ATV set about reviving the original premise of Ward 10 for the new to launch full daytime service. Yes before 1972 ITV went off the air for part of the afternoon.
It has been suggested it wasn’t just the fact there were more hours of TV to fill for ITV returning to home-grown medical dramas it has been said that Lady Grade having missed Emergency Ward 10 kept nagging hubby Lew to bring it back.
The British General Hospital – which had no connection to the American version – was to be based in a fictional Midland town. Although the programme itself was made at ATV Elstree, where its predecessor had also been produced.
Devised by Max Marquis and Dick Sharpes the story of the Midland General would once again surround the lives, professional struggles and loves of the doctors and nurses – rather than the woes and illnesses of the patents, who would be secondary in storylines to the medical characters.
ATV Network in its 1977 publicity for the show sums it up with this statement: “The programme is not to preach, but to entertain. Within the framework of a fiction series, the private and professional problems of both patients and staff of a large hospital complex are investigated in depth. Sometimes dramatically, sometimes humorously – but always interestingly.”
The setting for The Midland General was based on the real Luton and Dunstable General Hospital – and while it thrived on the homely patient care storylines and the relationships of the staff it did also slide into a melodrama slant at times. Viewers raised their eyebrows when Jill Gascoigne’s character – patient Janey Hart – tragically died after Dr Neville Bywaters – actor Tony Adams – had fallen in love with her. But not to worry, a few episodes later and Jill Gascoigne returns to the hospital as Janey’s twin-sister!
Dr Neville did eventually find happiness when General Hospital aired an edition entitled ‘Spectre at the Feast’ celebrating the characters marriage to Caroline Pennington – actress Joanna Van Gyseghem – in 1977.
The show also at times ventured into deeper medical storylines, this was the exception rather than the rule however in the daytime episodes. But topical, and sometimes graphic scenes of hospital operations were aired from time to time over the series eight-year run including when writer David Fisher wrote the storyline ‘Twice Shy’ which revolved around a rabies crisis.
ATV publicity in 1977 notes the script: “accurately anticipated the frightening implications of an outbreak of rabies, many months before the subject became headline news.”
Nick McCarty’s storyline entitled ‘All Fall Down’ was praised for its truthful and sympathetic portrayal of a young man coming to terms with epilepsy and how it affects his social and professional life. ATV note that this storyline generated many letters to the studios offering congratulations on the sensitive way in which the emotive subject was handled while Liz Gebhardt’s moving performance as an anorexic also gained much praise.
The formula clearly worked, after 270 episodes, in 1975 General Hospital left daytime and its twice-weekly half hour slots and headed to Friday nights as an hour-long drama.
The show also had a change in direction, with a new more gritty, dramatic, theme tune in place ‘Red Alert’, replacing the gentler daytime version. The content of the drama also re-focused to show more medical storylines and procedures. The BBC had its gritty hospital saga Angels to rival ATV Network’s counterpart and so the ITV serial upped its medical game providing much more detailed scenes of surgery and medical discussion.
ATV publicity on the series, released in 1977, comments that the success of the show: “owes much to the almost documentary accuracy of its medical details – from the smallest piece of hospital equipment, to the technical expertise in a highly complicated heart transplant operation.
“Written mainly by a small team of leading television writers under the supervisation of producer Royston Morley. …After approval of the basic theme by producer and script editor, the writer spends several weeks researching his subject. Every detail is then checked by the programme consultant before being approved for production.”
However by 1979 management at ATV had changed and it was felt that the show was – like Emergency Ward 10 before it – becoming irrelevant, corny and out of touch. The cosy nature of General Hospital with its attractive doctors and sexy nurses was deemed out of date for the 1980s and after 70 hour-long episodes, and 340 overall editions, the Midland General closed its doors for the final time; leaving home-grown medical drama success – in its more graphic, gritty less glamorous style – to the BBC with shows such as Casualty and Holby City. The latter produced at the same studios as Emergency Ward 10 and General Hospital ironically.
Had ATV not lost heart with General Hospital it may still be on air today. After all by the late 1980s daytime audiences clearly had a desire for the gentle style of medical drama when ITV began showing Grundy Television’s The Young Doctors. It became a ratings hit for ITV daytime.
Like Doctors and Emergency Ward 10 the show also had a host of star names appear over the years. The Midland General staff included porter Ernie Penrose played by future Coronation Street killer Richard Hillman – actor Brian Capron, Tony Adams – Dr Neville Bywaters – moved over to Crossroads where he remained for a decade as smooth manager Adam Chance, Lynda Bellingham played Nurse Hilda Price – now more famous as a chatterbox on gossip show Loose Women and sitcom Desmond’s actress Carmen Munro as Sister Francis Washington.
Patients included Joanna Lumley (some mistake her role in this show for the none-related American serial with the same name), Carry On star Patsy Rowlands, Birds Of A Feather actress Linda Robson, Allo’ Allo’s Carmen Silvera and other Crossroads’ faces including Roger Sloman and Peter Hill.
