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Casualty 1900s
Apr. 6th, 2011 11:34 pmCasualty 1900s is the collective name for the prequel spinoff of BBC’s long running Casualty series. I’m not a fan of medical dramas and will likely never watch the original show, but I had heard good things about this and decided to check it out. (It actually took me about a year-and-a-half to get ahold of it. Since the original series has never come to the US and doesn’t seem to have much internet presence, I suppose that would make the spinoff even rarer?)
The series takes place in the London Hospital from1906-1909, separated into individual series by year (1 episode for 1906, 3 for 1907, and 6 for 1909) and all the characters and cases are based on real people and cases from memoirs, diaries, letters and hospital records. Some no doubt dramatized more than others. (One particular liberty apparently being that, according to 1906, one major character left the hospital in 1907, but she remains there throughout the series.)
Like a lot of dramas set in the time period, there’s a heavy focus on social conditions and changes. Unlike most of the ones I’ve seen, the upper and middle classes are largely excluded, and the focus is almost entirely on the poor and their conditions, even if the central cast (the doctors and nurses) is higher on the social ladder, and a lot of the appeal for me was having that POV instead of the more common POV of the better off people eventually becoming more aware and reaching out, with the POV remaining that of the sympathetic benefactor/reformer.
There’s also a very large focus on the medical practices and conditions, with postscripts explaining how long something remained a practice, and what its consequences may have been. This is one of those things (the entire drama itself is, really) that I would not have much interest in in a contemporary setting, but find engrossing and interesting in a historical setting. Rather like Noel Streatfeild’s shoes books, in a way. Unfortunately, it also shows many procedures, and I was too faint of heart to not frequently have to avert my eyes. And then, being set in a hospital, there were various moments of “whoa, didn’t need to see that,” though not nearly as many as some other shows would have had.
Anyway, I found this to be very good and interesting, and am sad that it’ll probably never make it stateside.
The series takes place in the London Hospital from1906-1909, separated into individual series by year (1 episode for 1906, 3 for 1907, and 6 for 1909) and all the characters and cases are based on real people and cases from memoirs, diaries, letters and hospital records. Some no doubt dramatized more than others. (One particular liberty apparently being that, according to 1906, one major character left the hospital in 1907, but she remains there throughout the series.)
Like a lot of dramas set in the time period, there’s a heavy focus on social conditions and changes. Unlike most of the ones I’ve seen, the upper and middle classes are largely excluded, and the focus is almost entirely on the poor and their conditions, even if the central cast (the doctors and nurses) is higher on the social ladder, and a lot of the appeal for me was having that POV instead of the more common POV of the better off people eventually becoming more aware and reaching out, with the POV remaining that of the sympathetic benefactor/reformer.
There’s also a very large focus on the medical practices and conditions, with postscripts explaining how long something remained a practice, and what its consequences may have been. This is one of those things (the entire drama itself is, really) that I would not have much interest in in a contemporary setting, but find engrossing and interesting in a historical setting. Rather like Noel Streatfeild’s shoes books, in a way. Unfortunately, it also shows many procedures, and I was too faint of heart to not frequently have to avert my eyes. And then, being set in a hospital, there were various moments of “whoa, didn’t need to see that,” though not nearly as many as some other shows would have had.
Anyway, I found this to be very good and interesting, and am sad that it’ll probably never make it stateside.