218 General Hospital

First  watched  : Uncertain

I've  no  idea  when  I  first  caught  this  but  it  would  have  been  1975  or  later  as  that  was  when  it  moved  to  a  Friday  evening  slot  as  an  hourly  drama  rather  than  two  half-hour  dramas  shown  in  the  early  afternoon. It  wasn't  the  first  medical  soap; there  had  been  a  successful  twice-weekly  series  Emergency  Ward  Ten  in  the  late  fifties  and  sixties  and  my  mum  and  gran  annoyingly  kept  referring   to  this  by  that  name  even  though  there  was  no  direct  continuity  between  the  two  series.

I  recall  the  characters  better  than  the  storylines  , particularly  the  irascible  and  outspoken  consultant  Parker-Brown  played  by  the  fearsome  looking  Lewis  Jones  ( above )  who  regularly  caused  headaches  for  the  more  diplomatic  head  honcho  Mr  Armstrong  ( David  Garth ).   There  was  one  episode  where  Parker  Brown  became  a  patient  and  was  predictably  a  troublesome  one. The  target  of  Parker  Brown's  ire  was   usually   the  head  administrator  Kirby  ( Eric  Lander ),  set  up  to  be  the  villain   of  the  series  but  really  just  a  guy  doing  his  job. I  think  I  probably  first  heard  the  word  "bureaucrat"  from  Parker  Brown's  lips  in  relation  to  Kirby.  Tony  Adams  ( from  Crossroads )  and  confusingly  Tom  Adams  played  the  younger  doctors  for  use  in  the  romantic  sub-plots.

The  series  was  cancelled  in  1979  with  bosses  thinking  it  unrealistic  and  it's  received  little  attention  since,  with  many  episodes  believed  lost.  Lewis  Jones  had  little  interest  in  TV  work  after  the  series  ended ;  apart  from  a  brief  appearance  in  Bergerac  a  couple  of  years  later , he  stuck  to  the  theatre. At  the  time  of  writing  he's  still  alive  aged  91.