TRAIN CRASHES, MOTORWAY PILE UPS AND STABBINGS – CASUALTY LAUNCHES SEARCH FOR FANS’ FAVOURITE MOMENTS
To celebrate its 25th birthday on 6th September, the world’s longest running prime time medical drama Casualty is asking fans to vote for their favourite episode from a shortlist of ten past classics.
From series 18’s dramatic train crash to the sectioning of Ruth Winters (Georgia Taylor) in series 25 and series 12’s mass motorway pile up to Josh’s (Ian Bleasdale’s) stabbing in series 21, viewers can go to the Casualty website to watch highlights from the top ten shortlisted episodes, enjoy the current casts’ most memorable moments and vote for their favourite episode. And in a special online exclusive, see Casualty favourite Derek Thompson explain how not to end up in a hospital’s emergency department.
Highlights of the episodes, specially-filmed cast interviews and voting details will be available from Saturday 27th August at www.bbc.co.uk/casualty.
The ten episodes chosen by producers as the most memorable Casualty episodes are:
Series 1, ep 15, 1986
“Closure” by Paul Unwin & Jeremy Brock (night shift goes on strike to protest about closure)
Series 7, ep 24, 1993
“Boiling Point” by Peter Bowker (riot and arson in the ED)
Series 12, ep 17, 1998
“The Golden Hour” by Barbara Machin (motorway pile-up)
Series 12, ep 22, 1998
“Love Me Tender” by Tony Lindsay (Tina admits to Eve she was raped)
Series 18, ep 1, 2004
“End of the Line” by Ann Marie di Mambro (train crash)
Series 21, ep 15, 2007
“Killing Me Softly” by Barbara Machin (Josh gets stabbed)
Series 22, ep 24, 2008
“Before a Fall” by Dana Fainaru (Ruth’s attempted suicide)
Series 23, ep1, 2009
“Farmead Menace” by Mark Catley (Holby race riots and Tess impaled on a building site)
Series 24, ep 47, 2010
“Nice & Easy Does It” by Sasha Hails (Megan’s assisted suicide)
Series 25, ep 23, 2011
“Place of Safety” by Dana Fainaru (Ruth sectioned)
Launched in 1986 at a time when the NHS was under increasing pressure, Casualty featured the working lives of the staff in the emergency department of a large, inner-city hospital. The first series consisted of just 14 episodes and a pilot. Now a quarter of a century on, Casualty runs for 47 weeks a year and is still a stately staple of BBC One’s Saturday night schedule, regularly pulling in over 6 million viewers in a much-changed tv landscape.
“Very few television shows last two or three series and only a tiny handful last 25 years,” says BBC Controller of Continuing Drama John Yorke. “During that time hundreds of medical dramas have come and gone, but Casualty has outlasted all of them”.
