ER (TV series)
ER is an American medical drama television series created by novelist and medical doctor Michael Crichton that aired on NBC from September 19, 1994, to April 2, 2009, with a total of 331 episodes spanning over 15 seasons. It was produced by Constant c Productions and Amblin Television, in association with Warner Bros. Television. "ER" follows the inner life of the emergency room (ER) of fictional County General Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, and various critical issues faced by the room's physicians and staff. The show became the longest-running primetime medical drama in American television history, also became the 2nd longest medical drama across the globe (behind BBC's "Casualty"). It won 23 Primetime Emmy Awards, including the 1996 Outstanding Drama Series award, and received 124 Emmy nominations. "ER" won 116 awards in total, including the Peabody Award, while the cast earned four Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Ensemble Performance in a Drama Series. As of 2014, "ER" has grossed over in television revenue.
History of the National Health Service
Within a few years of the NHS, popular fictional films were beginning to focus on the NHS as a location for dramatic narratives. Films such as "White Corridors" (Pat Jackson, 1951) and "Mandy" (Alexander MacKendrick,1952), shown within the early years of the NHS, showed day-to-day life in an NHS hospital as well as dealing with specific single-issue topics such as deafness within postwar British society. The Doctor series, starring firstly Dirk Bogarde and later Leslie Philips, took a comedic look at the antics of a young doctor in an NHS hospital and the Carry on ... comedies, Carry on Nurse (Gerald Thomas,1959), Carry on Doctor (Gerald Thomas, 1967) and Carry on Matron (Gerald Thomas, 1972) also used comic situations within the NHS hospital to poke fun at both the NHS as an institution and the capers of doctors, nurses and patients alike. From the late 1950s, the NHS also became an important subject within the wider history of British soap operas. Emergency Ward 10 was first broadcast in 1957 on ITV and ran until 1967 and followed the life and loves of the staff and patients of the fictionalised Oxbridge General. ITV later followed this up with General Hospital which borrowed much from Emergency Ward 10 in terms of its themes and focus. The idea of a medical hospital as a suitable and popular setting for a soap opera continued to take root in the 1980s. Casualty, set in an A&E department, was first broadcast in 1986 and has since become the longest running medical drama in the world. At a time when controversy over the NHS was high on the public agenda, Paul Unwin and Jeremy Brock began their proposal for Casualty by declaring that ‘In 1948 a dream was born: a National Health Service. In 1985 the dream is in tatters.’ This politicised agenda remained in evidence during the first three series of the Casualty, with the programme showing how those who fictionally worked for the NHS were also dissatisfied with the new direction of the Service. During the 1990s television began more overtly showing medical practitioners who were critical or cynical of the NHS. In particular, Cardiac Arrest was broadcast on BBC 1 utilised this type of cynicism within its narrative plots. Television has also forged a place for the NHS within reality television programming. In particular 24 Hours in A&E and One Born Every Minute have adopted medical documentary formats to show the inner workings of particular NHS hospital departments. Fly-on-the-wall footage is interweaved with interviews with patients, staff and relatives as they give their perspectives on the medical cases shown in each episode.