Doctors (2000 TV series)
Doctors is a British medical soap opera, first broadcast on BBC One on 26 March 2000 and concluded on 14 November 2024. Filmed in Birmingham and set in the fictional West Midlands town of Letherbridge, the soap follows the lives of the staff of both an NHS doctor's surgery and a university campus surgery, as well as the lives of their families and friends. Initially, only 41 episodes of the programme were ordered, but due to the positive reception, the BBC ordered it as a continuing soap opera. Doctors was filmed at the Pebble Mill Studios until 2004; production then relocated to the BBC Drama Village, where it filmed until 2024. Episodes were filmed three months prior to transmission and were typically broadcast Mondays to Fridays at 2:00 pm on BBC One, as well as having classic episodes broadcast on Drama. It took three annual transmission breaks across the year: at Easter, during the summer and at Christmas.
During its tenure, Doctors consistently won the share of viewers in its daytime time slot, and in 2023, it averaged 1.6 million live viewers. The programme was nominated for and won numerous awards, with critics praising it for tackling issues that were considered controversial and taboo. The longest-serving cast member was Adrian Lewis Morgan, who portrayed Jimmi Clay from 2005 until the final episode. Alongside its regular cast, Doctors featured numerous guest characters who typically appeared in an episode as part of a self-contained "story of the day". Series producer Peter Eryl Lloyd estimated that at least 800 guest actors were contracted on the soap per year. Due to the large number of actors who made a guest appearance, Doctors gained a reputation for becoming "a British actor's rite of passage". In October 2023, the BBC announced that Doctors had been cancelled due to financing issues, a decision that was met with [|universal criticism].
Production
Series overview
Creation and time slot
Doctors was produced by BBC Birmingham and was screened on BBC One. It was created by Chris Murray, with Mal Young as the original executive producer. Musician Paul Hemmings was hired to compose the theme music for the opening and closing titles. When the series premiered, Jane Lush, the BBC's head of daytime programming, felt that commissioning Doctors was an ambitious move. She thought that the series offered something new and that viewers would not realise they would want a series like Doctors until they had seen it. Lush noted that despite its serial element, the premise of the programme meant that people could "dip in and out" since the core cast would stay the same and the episodes would be self-contained with a "story of the day". Young echoed Lush's comments and had wanted to create a daytime drama series long before his involvement with Doctors. Young felt that the previously unfilled daytime slot would be good due to there being an increase of remote workers in 2000. Doctors was originally shown at 12:30 pm as a lead-in to BBC News at One. For a brief trial period in mid-2000, certain episodes from the first series were shown on Fridays at 7:00 pm, but due to rival soap Emmerdale being transmitted at the same time, they suffered from low ratings, and were instead trialled in a 2:10 pm time slot. The series later moved into a 1:45 pm timeslot in 2008. In its final year of transmission, the timeslot was changed to 2:00 pm. Cast member Diane Keen opined that Doctors should be broadcast in a primetime slot, but Liam Keelan, controller of BBC Daytime schedules, commented: "its true home will always be as a hugely appreciated early afternoon drama".In a 2010 review of BBC continuing dramas, it was reported by Digital Spy that Doctors regularly won the largest share in its time slot, and attracted consistent audience numbers, with an average of 2 million viewers per episode. In 2020, executive producer Mike Hobson was asked by Allison Jones of Inside Soap if he would consider a late-night time slot, to which he commented: "for our audience, we sit quite nicely". He felt that if the soap was shown at night, producers would "still tackle all the powerful subject matters , and that seeing more sexual or swearing scenes would not add to the quality of the programme". In February 2022, it was announced that alongside its afternoon transmission on BBC One, episodes would be repeated at 7:00 pm on BBC Two. Kate Oates, head of continuing drama at the BBC, said that her motivation to give Doctors a primetime evening slot was to give the programme a push for a new audience. The change took place from 7 March 2022. Despite being billed as a permanent change, the BBC Two repeats were dropped from the schedule after two months.
Classic episodes of Doctors were screened on Gold in 2005, but the screenings eventually ceased. Demand garnered for the classic episodes to return, and in 2023, Gold's sister channel, Drama, attained the rights for them. They have been airing two Classic Doctors episodes every weekday at 8:00 am from 14 August 2023.
Filming and locations
Doctors filmed episodes three months in advance of their broadcast. The episodes were filmed from January to November, and due to the effect weather had on the output, producers implemented "seasonal episodes" to give the impression that the soap was set in real time. Episodes were filmed in groups of three, described as a "block". Each group of three episodes had the same production crew and it typically took seven days to shoot each block. Usually, two blocks are filmed at once, although, there were many instances where three blocks were filmed at once. In these instances, regular cast members would be filming from nine to twelve episodes within the same period of time. In 2002, in the wake of the death of the Queen Mother, Doctors was pulled from the schedule to report on her death. However, the episode had been self-contained and focused completely on the "story of the day", meaning it could be transmitted at any point in the series. Crew member Peter Eryl Lloyd said that led to the invention of "lifesavers", a "story of the day"-led episode that could be transmitted at any given point.On his experience on the soap, cast member Christopher Timothy said: "The budget was a joke and the pressure more intense than anything I'd ever experienced. But it was six years of great fun". Each of the regular cast members was allocated a private dressing room, while guests and recurring cast were given a shared dressing room behind the wardrobe department.
From 2000 to 2004, Doctors was filmed at the BBC's Pebble Mill studios in Edgbaston. The series used space originally occupied by Pebble Mill at One. A set was built especially for the series, with the BBC hoping that the series would become a "fixture of daytime schedules" like fellow BBC soap Neighbours. After the closure of Pebble Mill, BBC Birmingham moved to a smaller production base in Birmingham city centre which had no studio space for the show. In 2004, production moved again to the BBC Drama Village development in Selly Oak. To explain the transition between locations on screen, the soap featured a storyline in which the Riverside Health Centre is destroyed by an explosion, prompting the move to the Mill Health Centre, named after the series' original production home.
Alongside the Mill, which was filmed in Melville House, other regular locations included Letherbridge Police Station and the Icon Bar, the University of Letherbridge's Campus Surgery, St. Phils Hospital, HMP Letherbank Prison, various interior and exterior locations and Sutton Vale surgery. In 2022, BBC Birmingham announced that its base and all of its productions would eventually be moving from Selly Oak to Digbeth. However, due to the BBC deciding not to fund a move for the Doctors set, the series was cancelled and they concluded their filming on the Selly Oak site in 2024.
Annual breaks
Doctors took three holiday-related annual breaks: at Easter, during the British school summer holidays and at Christmas. On 4 June 2016, it was confirmed that Doctors was to take a three-month transmission break from 10 June 2016; the first long break since 2006. It was replaced by coverage of UEFA Euro 2016, Wimbledon and the 2016 Summer Olympics along with Irish drama Red Rock. The series returned on 30 August 2016. It then took annual breaks during the summer until its ending in 2024. It was later explained that the break was introduced due to the limited budget allocated to the programme by the BBC, which prevented year-round broadcasting. The pause also gave the cast and crew time to produce episodes over the summer, helping them keep up with the demands of production.History
2000–2016: ''Decade of Doctors'' and 3000 episodes
The first episode of Doctors was transmitted on 26 March 2000. In 2002, episodes received an average of 2.5 million viewers. Young departed from the position of executive producer on 6 April 2005, with Will Trotter assuming the position from the next day. In April 2006, Doctors aired the first same-sex wedding on British television when characters Greg Robinson and Rico Da Silva got married. In 2009, the episode which reached the highest ratings in Doctors history was "Restraint" which was aired on 31 March. The episode saw Ruth Pearce admitted to a psychiatric hospital after developing an obsession over colleague and friend Michelle Corrigan. Another episode in 2009 that reached 3.4 million viewers was "Cold Comfort", which was the last episode aired in 2009; it involved the Christmas party, which saw Lily Hassan's marriage proposal to Heston Carter turned down. On 26 March 2010, Doctors celebrated its 10th anniversary and 1800th episode. Under the title Decade of Doctors, the BBC aired five-minute episodes about the series after each day's episode during the anniversary week. In each episode, cast and crew members talked about topics including the conception of the series, their favourite storylines and facts about Doctors. That year, the highest watched episode received 2.9 million viewers. The average for the year was 2 million viewers.On 16 February 2011, Doctors aired its 2000th episode titled "Quarantine", which was extended and ran for 60 minutes. From 17 September 2012, for five days, special red button episodes aired after the regular episodes, focusing on the conclusion of the Harrison Kellor storyline, exploring Elaine Cassidy and how she dealt with Harrison's change of plea for Lauren Porter's murder. In 2012, Doctors aired a "Shakespeare week", with episodes themed around "a number of his most popular plays". On 16 June 2015, Trotter departed from the position of executive producer, with Mike Hobson assuming the position from the next day. Episodes in that year averaged at 1.7 million viewers, with the highest rating of the year being 1.94 million. In February 2015, Doctors sparked criticism after the word "pussy" was used in an episode. Due to the programme being transmitted in the daytime, the claims of "offensive language" led to an investigation by Ofcom, a broadcasting regulator. They were later cleared of any breaches of the code, with an Ofcom spokesperson stating: "Following investigation, we found this BBC One soap didn't break our rules for offensive language before the watershed. The language used in the show was justified by the context it was presented in and aired at a time when children were unlikely to be watching."
On 10 September 2015, Doctors aired its 3000th episode, "The Heart of England", which was extended and ran for 60 minutes. The average viewing figure for 2015 was 2 million. Later that year, to commemorate the 400th year of Shakespeare's death, the soap revisited his work, with a week of episodes focusing specifically on his sonnets. The cast filmed scenes at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon for the episodes, one of which includes Heston reciting Sonnet 73 to girlfriend Ruhma Hanif. Series producer Lloyd also stated that due to the rise of homelessness in the Birmingham area that year, the soap would be featuring a week that focuses on homelessness. The "emotional and powerful" homelessness week aired in May 2016. Script editor Nasreen Ahmed stated that lots of research went into the week, with researchers constantly finding new statistics and information. She added that it was tricky to cover the "darker stuff" with their daytime transmission slot, but opined that Doctors is the perfect platform for a homelessness storyline, due to the links to the medical surgery.