Casualty

Casualty started in 1986 and was a brilliant show about the working lives of Holby City Accident & Emergency Department doctors and nurses. In my opinion, from 1986 to about 1999 it was consistently good drama. It was very realistic at times and showed us the bad side of Britain's National Health Service and the politics that governed it.

Casualty always provided entertainment. The main problem is, how do you continually top things? How do you push that envelope? Casualty has had plane crashes, train crashes, diseases, NHS cutbacks etc. In a way, the current series of Casualty are not as good. They have become victims of their own success. Perhaps they should have saved the bangs for later.

One criticism I do have of Casualty's later years is the focus on the staff's private lives. I do like to get a little glimpse of the doctors and nurses private lives but sometimes they overdo it (The Bill does the same and London's Burning too). If Casualty is to keep me as a viewer, then it will have to tone back on the private lives of the staff and focus more on the job itself. And it needs to stop axing popular characters. All characters run their course eventually but these last few years, Casualty has had a habit of axing characters before they've even been given a chance.

If it can try to focus more on the job and think before axing characters, then Casualty has a great future.

Fantastic series - I was always a great fan but the early part of each show, where they set up each of the story lines, used to worry me somewhat! As you can imagine, the show was centered around Holby City Hospital and the scenes were being set so you KNEW that the 'normal' people going about their 'normal' lives in 'normal' situations were about to experience something fairy dreadful to warrant their inclusion in the show and their appearance in the A&E (UK) or the ER (US) with any manner of tubes and machines beeping and blipping their lives away. Consistently superb storylines and great acting (don't you love 'Charlie!) made this compulsive viewing.

I am not a Casualty buff, but what I do see of it is always quite good. It is drama at its most realistic - you are instantly brought into the serious, morbid, emotional world of modern hospitals. The lack of blood and gore only make everything seem even more real. When a death occurs, you sure do know about it - it manages to hit really hard, unlike in Hollywood movies. The drama itself is superb and somewhat painful at times - anyone who has been in a hospital will feel things coming back to them after an episode of this. The lack of musical score save for the credits and the complete lack of glamorisation in any form strip this down to the bare bones of realism. But sadly, this show is not perfect. While there's enough to warrant a viewing of a full episode, there really isn't much to make you want to keep coming back. And though the characters feel like real people, you just don't really know them and you can't sympathise with them - and that is the worst thing for a show like this. This is a real zombie of a show - it is moving and aware, but just doesn't feel alive, and just kind of drones for the hour each episode it plays. And, in spite of what I said earlier, there's way more blood and sweat in real hospitals too. 7/10

When this show first began I was still a schoolboy and I loved it because my dream was to be a nurse in a casualty unit. Since that time I have realised that dream, and also realised what utter tripe this show has become. True to BBC drama form these days it seems that everything must be miserable or depressing to be considered good drama. Over the years I have seen the show deteriorate into the realms of nothing more than a political hobby horse. Bearing little resemblance to reality in any way all this show does for me is ensure I turn over stat!

A great show in its day, unfortunately it's been dragged out far to long and has now become boring with absolutely pathetic storylines it's time to wrap it up.