Children's Ward
Children's Ward is a British children's television drama series produced by Granada Television and broadcast on the ITV network as part of its Children's ITV strand on weekday afternoons. It aired from 15 March 1989 until 4 May 2000. The programme was set in Ward B1, the children's ward of the fictitious South Park Hospital, and told the stories of the young patients and the staff present there.
Aimed at older children and teenagers, Children's Ward was a long-lived series for a children's drama, starting life in 1988 as a contribution to the Dramarama anthology strand "Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night", then first broadcast as a series in 1989 and running from then until 2000.
Production history
The series was conceived by Granada staff writers Paul Abbott and Kay Mellor, both of whom went on to enjoy successful careers as award-winning writers of adult television drama. At the time, they were both working on the soap opera Coronation Street, and had recently collaborated on a script for Dramarama.Abbott, who had been through a troubled childhood himself, had initially wanted to set the series in a children's care home rather than a hospital, but this was vetoed by Granada executives. During the course of its run, however, Children's Ward won many plaudits for covering difficult issues such as cancer, alcoholism, drug addiction and child abuse in a sensitive manner. The programme won many awards, including in 1997 a BAFTA Children's Award for Best Drama, won by an episode in which a serial killer lures children to him via the internet and is – highly unusually for children's television – not eventually caught.
Welsh television producer Russell T Davies was the show's producer, and writer of several episodes, from 1992 to 1995.
The decision to end Children's Ward came in mid-2000, after transmission of the final series, and ironically came as the sole original cast member Rita May – who played Auxiliary Nurse Mags – said she had no plans to leave the show.
On 5 and 6 January 2013, the show was repeated as part of CITV's Old Skool Weekend, which celebrated thirty years of the children's strand. This was also the first time the programme was seen on the CITV Channel.
Series overview
Filming location
Filmed at Bolton General Hospital, in Bolton, Greater Manchester. Some exterior shots were filmed outside the now demolished Maternity Hospital entrance at the former Withington Hospital, South Manchester."30 Years of CITV", which aired on ITV on 29 December 2012, revealed that interior sets for the hospital were filmed next door to some of the Coronation Street interiors.