BBC1 to broadcast ‘historical ER’

Published Wednesday 21 June 2006 at 14:20 by Liz Thomas

Exclusive: The BBC is to show a medical drama set 100 years ago in the famed Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, but in a twist in the period production genre the programme has been filmed in the fast-paced style of ER or Casualty.

Entitled Casualty 1906, the programme is set in the Receiving Room - today’s equivalent of A&E - and follows stories that are based on actual hospital records, nurse’s Ward Diaries and the intimate memoirs taken from the hospital that year.

Producer and director Bryn Higgins told The Stage: “The model for the script was ER so it is pacy and modern but is based in historical fact. The London has probably got the biggest archives in the world. It’s a big hospital in an interesting bit of London. 100 years ago is a very interesting time, modern medicine is starting to come through but it was still 40 years away from the arrival of antibiotics.”

Higgins, who has worked on Silent Witness and Nostradamus, said that the drama tackles issues that still affect viewers today. He added: “At the time everyone was gripped by an infection in the hospital. Then it was Erysipelas but it is the equivalent of MRSA today. Now we battle these things with antibiotics, but back then they employed an army of cleaners. Tuberculosis was prevalent then and we are experiencing a resurgence now and at the turn of the century there was a fear of Jewish immigrants, which echoes what is happening with Muslims today.”

Penned by Colin Heber Percy and Lyall Watson, who wrote BBC factual dramas Krakatoa and Constantine, the pilot has an ensemble cast including Cherie Lunghi, David Troughton and stars At Home with the Braithwaites and Funland actress Sarah Smart as nurse Ada Russell and upcoming talent Tom Riley as surgeon James Walton.

Smart said: “It is their little love story, that couldn’t happen because doctors and nurses couldn’t get involved with each other then. You weren’t allowed to date and if you wanted to you would have to leave.”

The show will broadcast in prime time on BBC1 over the bank holiday and if it proves a success, could lead to a number of mini-series based on original records and similarly set in specific years.

Joseph Merrick, known as the Elephant Man, spent the last few years of life at the Royal London and his bones are kept at the hospital. The Royal London’s archives contain documents dating back to 1740 and including complete patient records since 1883. Famously described by W Somerset Maugham as a place of misery, the hospital now has 675 beds and is the base for the HEMS helicopter ambulance service. A £1.2 billion redevelopment and expansion project is underway and upon completion it will have London’s leading trauma and emergency care centre.