Many fans are looking forward for Connie next week. I didn't realise how popular Connie is! She's going to be a great addition.

I think Connie will replace Zoe as Clinical Lead before the end of 2014.

The show is due a main character/patient death to be honest...a shock death could shake things up, as well as Connie's arrival which looks exciting.

As for yesterday's episode, it was decent enough. Liked the tribunal stuff with Ash/Lily and Guy Self. I don't watch Holby but liked Guy...had a nice gravitas about him. I could easily imagine him as a consultant on Casualty.

The patient stories were ok but Rita, Max and Robyn get on my nerves. I think Lofty has potential if they allow his character to grow without Max and Robyn.

Yes she was telling them off I just found, like you said, she could have asked to talk to them when his patient was not in pain

I find it odd how they have kept Robyn on and now cemented her by having two other main characters living with her. The other two she arrived with were much more likeable. This is my opinion

The Irish nurse was the only decent one

Bib: I'm not sure you would say that if you did watch Holby City, allthingsuk. I watch Holby City and I wish he was like what I saw in the tribunal last night. But he's caught up in the evergrowing issues his daughter has with her mother's (his wife's) death. Every week there is a new revelation about why Mummy didn't tell Zosia she was dying, a s/l that has run out its usefulness in the show with each reveal. It would've been interesting if the daugher didn't always behave like a spoilt brat at every turn.

It was a decent episode. But like you say, it lacked any spark whatsoever. Still not hugging Rita to my chest, though she's probably needed for the hard-nut head-cases who turn up in ED every now and then. She, after all, speaks their kind of language, so to speak.

I didn't see Lofty's debut so I'm biased when I say this: he does nothing for me atm. No personality; no nothing. They seemed to have swapped Jamie for this new version of blandness. Maybe there is something about his character I'm missing or something. I don't know, and right now I don't particularly care atm.

As for the doc bros, thank goodness this boring brotherly rivalry was nipped in the bud before it sucked me into another yarn of yawnness. Caleb was right: Ethan had to do something if another innocent patient was taking the wrap for something that was not their fault. But Ethan was also caught between a rock and hard place: how do you do something w/o breaking patient confidentiality? I don't see why he didn't go to Zoe or Ash for advice. In any event, I think his problem, as his relationship with Caleb seems to bear out, is that he is good at all the clincial and diagnoses stuff (much like Lily) but pretty lousy when it comes to dealing with all the messy human baggage that patients bring with them (and which inevitably plays a major part in their health and wellbeing). Caleb is the exact opposite. But really I could accept all this w/o having their rivalry highlighted every time they are both sharing a scene.


I think having Zoe calling out the doc brothers while the patient was still in pain was just a ploy to show how A&E is slowly becoming unmanageable under Zoe's supervision. Cue Connie, enter stage right. In truth, it's not something Zoe would do anyway. Rather she would take over than pull two doctors away for a telling off outside resus in the middle of their patient's treatment.

But she was the first to go, it made no sense at all, she would have been great continuing on, but hey who are we? We are just the viewers

I'd like it to go back to more patients dying - just on a regular basis. I don't really care about deaths of main characters; I want to see a serious hospital drama, and if I worked in a hospital where my colleagues kept dying in weird accidents and things, I would get out of there so fast! But patients have to die, otherwise there is no point in having a hospital drama.

Also, if Chloe Howman is such a 'bad actress', why does she keep on being re-used? She played the regular role of Kelly in Holby Blue, and since then has played two patient roles in Casualty before landing the part of Rita. It is true that it does annoy me when actors keep being re-used in new roles, which is something we were discussing this week, but it annoys me more on principle. I think Chloe is a pretty good actress, I can see why they keep bringing her back.

Choe's fantastic and Rita has been one of my more favourite new additions in recent years

I agree. I think Chloe Howman is absolutely fine, and personally speaking I like Rita more than any of the other recent additions. It makes a chance to have a nurse who isn't portrayed as a complete wet rag.

As for last night's episode, I thought it was a step up from the previous week's, but still nothing to write home about. Something really needs to be done to get the show out of the slump it's currently in, and sadly I really doubt bringing in Connie Beauchamp (a character I found obnoxious in Holby City and whom I can't see being any different in Casualty) is it.

In last night's episode Ethan said to the police officer:
"OK Paul, I think you may have collapsed a lung"

Paul didn't collapse a lung by himself (which is what the statement infers) it was collapsed due to injuries sustained in the accident.
Ethan should have said that Paul had a collapsed lung or that one of his lungs had collapsed

To be honest, I'm really not looking forward to Connie coming in. I was pleased to hear that she's going to be junior to Zoe because that would be an interesting dynamic but I think promoting her above Zoe would be a disaster. Despite being set in the same hospital, I think the ethos of Casualty and Holby City are very different. Casualty has much more of a team feeling, focusing on a single department who work together constantly and have a camaraderie and a more informal style. Holby City is a more hierarchical world with a clique of consultants who everyone else has to address by their title and a bunch of junior staff who get moved from ward to ward depending on the plot so never really get to form that many lasting attachments to their co-workers. (Although I accept there are exceptions to that.) Nick Jordan never quite worked because he was a Holby City character transplanted into Casualty, striding around making everyone call him "Mr Jordan" and feeling slightly out of place. Zoe feels like a Casualty clinical lead in a way that Nick never really did and I can't see Connie doing.

I know the consensus of quite a few of us on here seems to be that Casualty is in a slump at the moment but last night's episode secured the highest overnight rating for Casualty in 2014 to date: 5.61m viewers. This was no doubt helped by the weak opposition of The Americans on itv, securing only 0.96m!

Alternative viewpoint: 5.61m is still low. Given that the opposition on itv couldn't even muster 1m, you might be forgiven for wondering why Casualty couldn't get 6-7m in the overnights. For me, it just goes to show that it is pretty unremarkable drama at the moment. Who knows whether Connie's arrival will shake things up? I do hope, however, that Oliver Kent and Erika Hossington are not putting all their eggs in one basket in terms of Amanda Mealing joining the show. You only need to look at EastEnders' modest viewing figures to see that castings / comebacks actually have little impact on a show's performance. Casualty needs a tree and branch review of what kind of drama serial it wants to be: gritty, contemporary, relevant medical drama or soft soap.

I agree with you, on the whole. From the few Holby City episodes I have seen in recent years, the staff politics is played out in a very unconvincing, OTT style that is less apparent in Casualty.

Having said that, Casualty has had some excellent consultant characters who are notable for the fact that they weren't team players - Julian Chapman, brilliantly played by Nigel le Vaillant between 1990-1992 (series 5-mid series 7) was the template for later difficult consultants in the sense that he could be unpleasant, brusque and arrogant in manner. The difference with the characterisation in these early days, however, is that the characters were more rounded and so, though Julian had his off-moments with staff and patients, you'd also see more humble, "human" moments. By the time he left in 1992, he was very well respected by the team and he enjoyed a close working relationship with Charlie.

For me, Dylan Keogh (consultant or registrar? I forget) had echoes of Julian Chapman - arrogant but also an excellent doctor who was surprisingly rounded for a modern-day Casualty character. I think the show lost something when William Beck departed.

It will be interesting to see how Connie's character will work in Casualty: it could be 100% full-on dominatrix / b**ch but that routine could grow old quite quickly.

Although Casualty's share of 29% was excellent and on a cold Winter's night, that would equate to about 7 million viewers. 5.6 million is modest, but Casualty could easily add a million to that with a few tweaks here and there.

BIB - I agree, but the issue is going the gritty route is probably too much of a risk for the producers. I get the impression that it's more due to constraints from above that are preventing Casualty from going down a completely gritty route.

Soap is the safe way out and guarantees a solid viewing base. Casualty's more like a very safe pair of slippers...you know you're going to get soap every week and it's predictable in that respect.


Contrast that with Clive Mantle's character, Mike Barratt, who was pretty much the antithesis of Julian, a softer, calmer character who was more of a team player. I also liked Max. I found both Mike and Julian believable as doctors, but in different ways.

But Casualty has had a few poor consultant characters as well. Jack Hathaway (Series 11-12 - 1996-97) made little impact and was a poor man's Mike Barratt. As for Harry Harper, I warmed to him more towards the end of his stint as when he started, he was a bit pompous.

And yes, Dylan was a great character. He reminded a lot of Patrick Spiller...well written, had a great sense of mystery about him, and was very well played by William Beck. Dylan's probably the last character who has made an impact for me.

And as for Connie, I'm looking forward to her arrival but I'm not sure why the Casualty producers can't be brave enough to produce a new Consultant character with no previous connections to the department. I don't see why characters from Holby need to be transplanted into Casualty, like with Nick Jordan before her.

Btw is anyone still watching the Drama's repeats? It's up to Series 10 and I have to say Series 10 is right up there with one of the worst series of Casualty, along with the soapy mid 00s era. So much soapy romance trash.

because daddy is karl howman from comedy 'brush strokes' nepotism

Why? Whenever they do go down that route (FGM for example) it generally works very well in their favour. In fact, Casualty have just won an award for that storyline, and very much-deserved it is as well. I thought that showing the public the uses of the NHS against capitalism is the whole point of the premise of the show. None of this other rubbish, which could all take place in a show that wasn't about a hospital.

Here's next weeks preview clip:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01w14ff

Indeed. But why aren't they tackling grit, social realism and hospital issues more often? The writers are more than capable of it so it must be due to Oliver Kent and Erika Hossington's poor direction of the show.

Either that or they're afraid of complaints.

I don't like the soapy bits very much but there must be a reason why the producers keep defaulting to it.

I did actually make a complaint once, midway through Series 25 which was even worse than this current series. This is what I wrote:

I am complaining about Casualty because since the start of this series, it has been sappy, unbelievable, inconsistent and completely undermines the idea of good television. The specific episode I am complaining about is in my opinion the most dire episode there has ever been, but it is really just the latest in a long line. For example - tonight's episode portrayed a doctor threatening to cut off a patient's feet. It later showed him breaking all hospital rules to supposedly 'help' a sex offender by forcing him to take tablets, against his will, without explaining the consequences. The fact that it was implied that this patient appreciated this does not excuse the very dangerous message this sends. In real life, a doctor would be struck off for this. It is bad enough that there are no consequences at all in the programme, but this is not an isolated incident. Other episodes in this series have shown a paramedic beating up two patients (one of whom later died); some disturbingly graphic scenes of a character bleeding to death in a hospital basement; doctors, nurses and paramedics repeatedly losing their tempers with patients and judging them; a doctor almost cutting open a patient's skull and being dragged off to a psychiatric unit, before being miraculously reinstated in the ED less than six months later; and a poor representation of Islam in a Muslim nurse. It has now got to the point where the quality of programming is actually offensive. It is offensive to the NHS, because it completely undermines the hard work that they do. It is offensive to the actors, who work very hard to perform such rubbish day in, day out. And it is especially offensive to the viewers, who the scriptwriters seem to believe are so pathetically stupid that they would believe this kind of thing. A viewer can know absolutely nothing about hospitals, and still know for certain that this is not the procedure. Casualty has been deteriorating rapidly for about a year now. If anyone cares to look at the episode comments on the fansite 'holby.tv', they will see that the vast majority of loyal fans have a very similar view to myself. I feel that I am speaking for all fans when I say, Casualty is absolutely terrible at the moment. There is no better way to describe it. Yes, I am aware that it is a drama, not a documentary. And yes, I am aware that as a drama, Casualty might have to bend the truth occasionally and portray something that is slightly out of hospital procedure. However, when it gets to the extent where staff at a hospital are physically and mentally abusing both patients and their colleagues, and there are no repercussions of these incidents shown, then there is clearly something wrong. Casualty survived for a very long time without resorting to this, so there is absolutely no need to do it now. If Casualty is compared with its spin-off, Holby City, it is obvious which has more time and effort involved. Holby City portrays hospital life a lot more accurately, and this is obvious even to someone who has never set foot in a hospital. I have spoken to viewers who have been loyal to the programme since it started in the 1980s, and even they are considering stopping watching it because it is so bad. Unfortunately, if Casualty doesn't get its act together and soon, I think that there is a very, very good chance of its viewers dropping even further.

This was their reply:

Thanks for contacting us regarding 'Casualty' broadcast on BBC One.

I understand that you felt the recent storylines and production on the programme have been of poor quality, such as the continuing Polly storyline.

Whilst I appreciate your concerns, as a publicly-funded broadcaster we serve the whole of the United Kingdom providing programming to a hugely diverse audience with differing tastes and preferences. There will always be some aspects to our programmes that do not appeal to some people and this is the nature of broadcasting whereby we are serving many different people with many different expectations.

Drama must be able to explore important issues truthfully and violence is part of both nature and society. The degree and type of violence and the detail that can be shown depends on the context and also when the programme is shown - we are also careful not to overlook the consequences of violent acts otherwise there is a danger of seeming to sanitise them. We believe that there is no single set of standards in this area on which everyone can agree, and it is inevitable that programmes which are too violent to some people are perfectly acceptable to others.

Nevertheless, we’re guided by the feedback we receive and I can assure you I've registered your complaint on our audience log. This is a daily report of audience feedback that's made available to all BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers.

The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content.

Thanks for taking the time to contact us.

I didn't find it a particularly helpful response. I feel that they latched onto my most defensible criticism (the mention of violence in the Polly storyline) and focussed a lot on that, rather than actually seeing what I was complaining about, which was not violence but poor-quality drama.

Just seen the episode. I liked it. I loved Max pretending to be hurt by Ben's comments Max is hilarious - I do wonder if and what serious storyline he could eventually have?

Can't wait to see Connie next week - she's brilliant. I liked that we saw Guy interviewing Lily - he was talking about the meeting in Holby City last week so it's nice to see what he was talking about

Interesting that in DS' Holby Spoilers for next week it mentions that Connie has been made head of the ED. Surely after just one episode, she can't have been made Clinical Lead? That would defeat the whole point of the Connie v Zoe storyline the writers want to create and would be completely unrealistic imo. I hope it doesn't happen.

Robin- bad actress/character and needs to go ASAP.

Connie's back and I'm happy as larry,could not be happier.

Michelle Collins will be joining Casualty this summer as a love interest to Jeff.

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-...paramedic-jeff

She has been in the show previously, appearing back in 2010.

And last time she was a recurring character as well! What a stupid thing to do.