CASUALTY’s dramatic and devastating train crash episode from 2003 has steamed to success in a viewer vote to decide the drama’s most popular episode of the past 25 years, it was announced today (6 September, 2011) – Casualty’s 25th Birthday.
To celebrate its silver anniversary, Casualty asked fans to vote for their favourite episode from a shortlist of ten past classics on the Casualty website. The train crash episode “The End of the Line” was a clear winner with 18.5% of the votes; Ruth Winters’ (Georgia Taylor) suicide attempt in “Before a Fall” was runner up with 14.5% of Casualty fans choosing it their favourite; and Brenda Fricker’s moving comeback episode “Nice and Easy Does It” took third place with 12.4% of viewer votes.
“We’re delighted that so many Casualty fans visited the website to revisit their favourite moments of the last 25 years,” says series producer Nikki Wilson. “With the series still in great health on its 25th Birthday we hope we can keep producing memorable medical moments for many more years to come!”
Casualty: The End of the Line was first shown in September 2003 as the opening episode of series 18. Written by Ann Marie di Mambro, the episode was the first in a two-part story which saw Holby’s ED staff thrust into the centre of a terrifying train crash. Watched by over nine million viewers, the episode starred Martina Laird, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Derek Thompson, Suzanne Packer, Ian Bleasdale and Simon MacCorkindale.
Launched in 1986 at a time when the NHS was under increasing pressure, Casualty featured the working lives of the staff in the emergency department of a large, inner-city hospital. The first series consisted of just 14 episodes and a pilot. Now a quarter of a century on, Casualty runs for 47 weeks a year and is still a stately staple of BBC One’s Saturday night schedule, regularly pulling in over 6 million viewers in a much-changed tv landscape.
To view clips of the ten classic episodes, watch specially-filmed interviews of the Casualty cast discussing their own favourite moments, and see Derek Thompson advising on how not to end up in a hospital’s emergency department, go to the new-look Casualty website on www.bbc.co.uk/casualty.
Result of Viewer Vote:
Series 18, ep 1, 2003
“End of the Line” by Ann Marie di Mambro (train crash) 18.5%
Series 22, ep 24, 2008
“Before a Fall” by Dana Fainaru (Ruth’s attempted suicide) 14.5%
Series 24, ep 47, 2010
“Nice & Easy Does It” by Sasha Hails (Megan’s assisted suicide) 12.4%
Series 25, ep 23, 2011
“Place of Safety” by Dana Fainaru (Ruth sectioned) 11.2%
Series 23, ep1, 2009
“Farmead Menace” by Mark Catley (Holby race riots and Tess impaled on a building site) 10/.9%
Series 21, ep 15, 2007
“Killing Me Softly” by Barbara Machin (Josh gets stabbed) 8.5%
Series 7, ep 24, 1993
“Boiling Point” by Peter Bowker (riot and arson in the ED) 8%
Series 12, ep 22, 1998
“Love Me Tender” by Tony Lindsay (Tina admits to Eve she was raped) 6.9%
Series 12, ep 17, 1998
“The Golden Hour” by Barbara Machin (motorway pile-up) 6.4%
Series 1, ep 15, 1986
“Closure” by Paul Unwin & Jeremy Brock (night shift goes on strike to protest about closure) 2.8%
