Trivia for
"Casualty" (1986) More at IMDbPro »

• Radio D.J. Mark Burrows once played the part of a corpse, uncredited, but it took two hours to film it as he couldn't stop sneezing.
  
  
• Famous guest stars include Minnie Driver, Orlando Bloom and Kate Winslet.
  
  
• On one episode the "current patients" board had the ingredients of a recipe for English Breakfast written on it.
  
  
• The first season of Casualty attracted a lot of political controversy and government condemnation because it "dared" to be critical of hospital conditions and the chronic under-funding of the National Health Service. Also the Royal College of Nursing did not like the way that some of the nurses were portrayed. Despite these initial concerns, a second season of episodes was made, partly because the scripts had already been paid for, though initially it was thought that no more would be made after that. Now, twenty years later, Casualty has become a national institution and is the longest-running BBC drama programme and the second-longest-running medical drama in the world behind America's "General Hospital" (1963).
  
  
• Initially, the producers made no secret of the fact that Holby was a fictitious name for Bristol. However when a new producer, Peter Norris, was brought in for Season 4, he decided to play down the association between Holby and Bristol, and so Duffy's West Country accent disappeared and fewer recognizable Bristol locations were used.
  
  
• The BBC had two ideas for a hospital drama at the time of Casualty's conception - the 'cottage hospital' idea, which was seen as the safe option or an A&E department ('Front Line' - as Casualty was originally titled), an off the wall idea which posed more problems for the team. "I went for Casualty," said 'Jonathan Powell' about his decision, "because there was a feeling of life and passion and, well, I was anxious for new young people to create something. I put them [creators Jeremy Brock and Paul Unwin] with a very experienced producer, Geraint Morris, and hoped for the best."
  
  

Related Links