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I refer to the Australian soap opera which ran between 1976 and around 1982 in its country of origin, and from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s (give or take a few years, and various ITV regions) for the benefit of us Pommies here in Britain.
I have just been watching the first and last episodes on the old YouTube - the original title sequence looks almost so dated and irrelevant - 1970s disco dancing in a bar and the like, and the opening scenes look like something out a Carry On film nearly a decade before. By the end, they seemed to have characters portrayed within "playing cards" images in the opening titles. The final episode was when the hospital closed down for good, and Ada was the last to leave, leaving behind a bare and empty corridor - I suppose that recent viewers would think of it as an Australian answer to Casualty or Holby City.
Central was the first region to show the series in January 1982, on Thursdays, sandwiched between Get Up & Go! and Leonard Parkin's very own News at One, mostly because ATV had stopped showing The Sullivans in early 1981 and so was used as a replacement - so most would have seen it while eating their lunch at the time, along with the Bio-Tex, Pampers, and Milton Sterilising Fluid adverts in the ad breaks. Central thought it was pointless to show The Sullivans as a result once ATV disposed of it for some unknown reason. It finished in the Midlands in around July 1992, although some regions had shown it as late as 1995 where they reached the end of simply stopped showing it a la PCBH in the south of England. And within a year the replaced by the Kiwi Shortland Street which wasn't a patch on this.
It was not long before other regions followed suit, and ironically Yorkshire TV - the first region to show PCBH was the last one to show this series. Scottish Television never shown it. So many PCBH stars appeared it over the years - too many to mention on here - the actress who played Karen Travers also appeared in the first Young Doctors episode as well. And the late Judy McBurney (Pixie Mason in that other place) appeared as a nurse as well, a sort of an Australian Raquel Wolstenholme out of Corrie. And it had Cornelia Frances as Sister Scott as one couldn't have an Australian soap opera with her appearing in it.
I don't remember too much of these when they were originally on, mostly because it was usually the main programme that was on the TV at 3.30 pm when getting home from school on Mondays and Tuesdays (Sons and Daughters took its place on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays of course, transposed in the Granada region). I associate it with waiting for Children's ITV to start, and watching the second half of it.
Dr Graham Steele reminded me so much of Fred Dinenage as they both looked alike; Dennis the male orderly was a bit camp (the YD answer to Benny from Crossroads); and Ada could have been a prototype for Mavis in Coronation Street. And the "Rovers / Woolpack / Queen Vic" of the series happened to be called Bunnies (or Bunny's).
A Reg Grundy production of course - by the end of the series the "crystal" logo was used at the end, and it had twice as many episodes as PCBH, although each episode was only half the size.
When Channel 5 repeated Sons and Daughters in the late 1990s, I asked them whether they had the rights to The Young Doctors, considering they were made by the same company, but they said that they had not - and I was surprised when they had the rights to PCBH considering that some ITV regions were still showing it when they started in March 1997.
I don't suppose that anyone remembers it? - not even those in Australia themselves?
I have just been watching the first and last episodes on the old YouTube - the original title sequence looks almost so dated and irrelevant - 1970s disco dancing in a bar and the like, and the opening scenes look like something out a Carry On film nearly a decade before. By the end, they seemed to have characters portrayed within "playing cards" images in the opening titles. The final episode was when the hospital closed down for good, and Ada was the last to leave, leaving behind a bare and empty corridor - I suppose that recent viewers would think of it as an Australian answer to Casualty or Holby City.
Central was the first region to show the series in January 1982, on Thursdays, sandwiched between Get Up & Go! and Leonard Parkin's very own News at One, mostly because ATV had stopped showing The Sullivans in early 1981 and so was used as a replacement - so most would have seen it while eating their lunch at the time, along with the Bio-Tex, Pampers, and Milton Sterilising Fluid adverts in the ad breaks. Central thought it was pointless to show The Sullivans as a result once ATV disposed of it for some unknown reason. It finished in the Midlands in around July 1992, although some regions had shown it as late as 1995 where they reached the end of simply stopped showing it a la PCBH in the south of England. And within a year the replaced by the Kiwi Shortland Street which wasn't a patch on this.
It was not long before other regions followed suit, and ironically Yorkshire TV - the first region to show PCBH was the last one to show this series. Scottish Television never shown it. So many PCBH stars appeared it over the years - too many to mention on here - the actress who played Karen Travers also appeared in the first Young Doctors episode as well. And the late Judy McBurney (Pixie Mason in that other place) appeared as a nurse as well, a sort of an Australian Raquel Wolstenholme out of Corrie. And it had Cornelia Frances as Sister Scott as one couldn't have an Australian soap opera with her appearing in it.
I don't remember too much of these when they were originally on, mostly because it was usually the main programme that was on the TV at 3.30 pm when getting home from school on Mondays and Tuesdays (Sons and Daughters took its place on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays of course, transposed in the Granada region). I associate it with waiting for Children's ITV to start, and watching the second half of it.
Dr Graham Steele reminded me so much of Fred Dinenage as they both looked alike; Dennis the male orderly was a bit camp (the YD answer to Benny from Crossroads); and Ada could have been a prototype for Mavis in Coronation Street. And the "Rovers / Woolpack / Queen Vic" of the series happened to be called Bunnies (or Bunny's).
A Reg Grundy production of course - by the end of the series the "crystal" logo was used at the end, and it had twice as many episodes as PCBH, although each episode was only half the size.
When Channel 5 repeated Sons and Daughters in the late 1990s, I asked them whether they had the rights to The Young Doctors, considering they were made by the same company, but they said that they had not - and I was surprised when they had the rights to PCBH considering that some ITV regions were still showing it when they started in March 1997.
I don't suppose that anyone remembers it? - not even those in Australia themselves?
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