This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these messages)
|
The Royal | |
---|---|
Genre | Medical drama |
Starring | Julian Ovenden Zoie Kennedy Robert Daws Amy Robbins Wendy Craig Ian Carmichael |
Opening theme | "Somebody Help Me" by The Spencer Davis Group, sung by Michael Starke |
Ending theme | "Somebody Help Me" (instrumental) by The Spencer Davis Group |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
No. of series | 8 |
No. of episodes | 87 (List of episodes) |
Production | |
Running time | 60 minutes |
Production company | ITV Studios |
Original release | |
Network | ITV |
Release | 19 January 2003 – 31 July 2011 |
Related | |
Heartbeat The Royal Today |
The Royal is a British period medical drama, produced by Yorkshire Television (later part of ITV Studios), and broadcast on ITV from 2003 until its cancellation in 2011. The series is set in the 1960s and focuses on the lives of the staff at the fictional "St Aidan's Royal Free Hospital", a National Health Service hospital serving the fictional rural seaside town of Elsinby and its surrounding area. The programme was a spin-off of ITV's period drama series Heartbeat and the first three series featured crossovers with Heartbeat and appearances by its cast members. From the start of the fourth series, the crossover elements were removed, and The Royal focussed on stories involving its own cast.
The series initially began with its cast including Ian Carmichael, Wendy Craig, Robert Daws and Amy Robbins, and gradually expanded. Much of the outdoor scenes were primarily shot within North Yorkshire, including within Whitby and Scarborough, with interior shots filmed at both The Leeds Studios and St Luke's Hospital, Bradford. The programme remained popular on television until its cancellation, generating its own spin-off, The Royal Today , with episodes later repeated on ITV3.
The Royal takes place within the fictional seaside town of Elsinby in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and focuses on the lives of the staff who work in St Aidan's Royal Free Hospital – a cottage hospital established by the ancestor of its hospital secretary, T. J. Middleditch, to serve its local community. Placed under the care of the National Health Service, the staff do their best to offer their patients care and treatment, including maintaining casualty facilities and operating theatres, while coping with their own lives. Like Heartbeat, episodes mainly focused on either one big story or two major storylines, medical problems, and an occasional side story, with overarching plotlines concerning the relationships and personal lives of the main characters. For the first three series, episodes featured crossovers with Heartbeat through some of the Heartbeat cast making appearances in plots on The Royal, the most prominent of these being Bill Maynard, William Simons and Mark Jordon, but this element of the programme was dropped after the third series of The Royal.
The majority of the plots centred on medical emergencies or serious medical cases, and often featured moral dilemmas. The Royal largely avoided political topics, though the Vietnam War was briefly the subject of one episode, and its main themes were the conflict between progressive and conservative social ideals, and the ethical challenges and social changes faced by the hospital's staff, reflecting the setting in the 1960s. Like Heartbeat, the show had a number of anachronisms, such as the use of the expression "the glass ceiling"
Filming of the interior scenes of "St. Aidan's" used both The Leeds Studios and St Luke's Hospital, Bradford. Most of the exterior scenes were shot during the summer months at the Red Court building on Holbeck Road, South Cliff, Scarborough, as well as the nearby park area and Holbeck Clock Tower. [1] [2] [3] The remaining exterior scenes were filmed elsewhere in the North Riding of Yorkshire, including Whitby.
Below is the list of ratings of The Royal, giving an overall result for each series.[ citation needed ]
Series | Year | Rank | Average audience share |
---|---|---|---|
1 | 2003 | 10th | 10.12 m |
2 | 2003 | 11th | 7.16 m |
3 | 2003–2004 | 13th | 9.17 m |
4 | 2004–2005 | 12th | 8.49 m |
5 | 2006 | 10th | 7.93 m |
6 | 2007 | 11th | 7.24 m |
7 | 2008–2009 | 15th | 4.91 m |
8 | 2009–2011 | 15th | 4.62 m (incl. ITV1+1) |
Overall rating | 12th | 7.45 m |
In 2007, ITV commissioned a daytime spin-off of The Royal, entitled The Royal Today . The spin-off focused on the same settings of the main show, but set in the present day with a new cast of characters. The show ran for one series in 2008 between 7 January to 14 March. The show was axed due to low ratings.[ citation needed ]
Speculation surrounding the future of both Heartbeat and The Royal began in 2009, when ITV announced on 4 March that a loss of £2.7 billion was forcing it to make cutbacks in employment numbers, the biggest of which were made at ITV Yorkshire Studios. Many raised concerns that the shows were to be axed, after reports were made to that effect in early January, though a spokesperson stated later that the production of the shows was simply "resting". [4] No official news was given that the show was axed, but like Heartbeat, the series ended with a cliffhanger surrounding one of its main characters, when the final episode was aired on 31 July 2011. [5] [6]
To date, only the first two series of The Royal have been released on DVD, in both Region 2 and Region 4. Series One was released on 3 October 2011 in Region 2, and on 5 December 2012 in Region 4. Series Two was released on 27 February 2012 in Region 2, and on 6 March 2013 in Region 4. Series 3–8 of The Royal remain unreleased, as of 2024.
Sir David John White, known professionally by his stage name David Jason, is an English actor. He has played Derek "Del Boy" Trotter in the BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses, Detective Inspector Jack Frost in A Touch of Frost, Granville in Open All Hours and Still Open All Hours, and Pop Larkin in The Darling Buds of May, as well as voicing several cartoon characters, including Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows, the BFG in the 1989 film, and the title characters of Danger Mouse and Count Duckula.
General Hospital was a British daytime soap opera produced by ATV that ran on ITV from 1972 to 1979. General Hospital was an attempt to replicate the success of one of British television's first major soap operas, Emergency Ward 10. The original theme music was "Girl in the White Dress" by the Derek Scott Orchestra which was used until 1975, when it was replaced by Johnny Pearson's "Red Alert" for the 60-minute episodes.
Heartbeat is a British police procedural period drama series, based upon the Constable series of novels written by Nicholas Rhea, and produced by Yorkshire Television until it was merged with ITV, then by ITV Studios, from 1992 until 2010. The series is set in the North Riding of Yorkshire during the 1960s, with plots centred on the fictional locations of Aidensfield and Ashfordly.
Kenneth Charles Cope was an English actor and scriptwriter. He was best known for his roles as Marty Hopkirk in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Jed Stone in Coronation Street, Ray Hilton in Brookside, Sid in The Damned and as a minor member of the Carry On team.
Angels is a British television seasonal drama series dealing with the subject of student nurses, which was broadcast by the BBC between 1975 and 1983. It was described as the "Z-Cars of nursing".
Within These Walls is a British television drama programme made by London Weekend Television for ITV and shown between 1974 and 1978. It portrayed life in HMP Stone Park, a fictional women's prison. Unlike later women-in-prison TV series, Bad Girls, and Australian series, Prisoner, and Wentworth (2013–2021), Within These Walls tended to centre its story-lines around the prison staff rather than the inmates.
G.P. is an Australian television series produced by Roadshow, Coote & Carroll for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the series was broadcast for 8 seasons between 1989 and 1996.
Where the Heart Is is a British drama television series set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Skelthwaite, created by Ashley Pharoah and Vicky Featherstone. The series first aired on ITV in the United Kingdom on 6 April 1997. The show focuses on the lives of a group of district nurses and their families who reside in the town. The show was created after Featherstone visited the Yorkshire town of Meltham. She was intrigued by the tight-knit community, particularly those connected to the local district nursing office. She approached Pharoah with her ideas, and they pitched the show to ITV; after the network ordered production of the first series, they – along with producer Kate Anthony – began creating the show. The series was filmed in the Colne valley of West Yorkshire, mainly in the villages of Marsden and Slaithwaite and the town of Meltham.
Walter Tenniel Evans was a British actor.
Always and Everyone is a British television medical drama, broadcast on ITV, that ran for four series between 7 June 1999 and 22 August 2002. Set in the Accident and Emergency department of Saint Victor's city hospital in Manchester, the series follows the everyday lives of the doctors and nurses working in the department, and was heavily described as ITV's answer to Casualty, and the British equivalent of ER.
"A Disturbing Case" is the second episode of the 1969 British television series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), distributed by ITC Entertainment and starring Mike Pratt, Kenneth Cope and Annette Andre. The episode was first broadcast on 28 September 1969 on ITV. It was directed by Ray Austin.
Michelle Hardwick is an English actress. She is known for her roles as hospital receptionist Lizzie Hopkirk in the ITV drama series The Royal and Vanessa Woodfield in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale.
Robert Daws is an English actor, and crime fiction author. He is best known for his television roles, including Tuppy Glossop in Jeeves and Wooster (1990–93), gruff cricketer Roger Dervish in the comedy Outside Edge (1994–96), mini-cab firm owner Sam in the sitcom Roger Roger (1996–2003), and East Yorkshire GP Dr Gordon Ormerod in the period medical drama The Royal (2003–11).
The Royal Today is a British medical drama, and a spin-off of the similarly themed drama, The Royal. The concept is that whilst The Royal is set in the late 1960s, The Royal Today featured the same hospital in the present day, with a new set of characters working in the same location. Each episode followed the events of a single day, and the show was broadcast daily, so the series could be said to progress in real time.
The Leeds Studios is a television production complex on Kirkstall Road in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. ITV plc had proposed to close the studios in 2009, however later in the year had a change of mind and instead decided to refit them as high-definition studios.
Jason Durr is a British actor of theatre, television and film. Durr made his television debut as Alex Hartman in 1990 in the sci-fi drama Jupiter Moon in 1990 and went on to star as Mike Bradley in the Yorkshire-based police drama series Heartbeat from 1997 until 2003. Between 2016 and 2023, he appeared in the medical drama series Casualty as David Hide.
The seventh series of the British medical drama television series Casualty commenced airing in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 12 September 1992 and finished on 27 February 1993.
Monroe is a British medical drama television series created and written by Peter Bowker and produced by Mammoth Screen for the ITV network. The series follows a neurosurgeon named Gabriel Monroe, played by James Nesbitt. The six-part series was commissioned by ITV as one of a number of replacements for its long-running police drama series The Bill, which was cancelled in 2010. Filming on Monroe began in Leeds in September 2010, with production based in the old Leeds Girls' High School in Headingley. The first episode was broadcast on ITV on 10 March 2011 to strong ratings. A second series followed in 2012. On 14 November 2012, it was announced that ITV had cancelled Monroe due to low viewing figures.
Doctor Down Under is an Australian television comedy series based on a set of books by Richard Gordon about the misadventures of a group of doctors. The series follows directly from its predecessor Doctor on the Go, and was produced by the Seven Network in association with the Paul Dainty organization and broadcast in 1979.
Cracked is a Canadian police crime drama television series which aired from January 8 to November 25, 2013 on CBC Television. The series was created by writer Tracey Forbes and Toronto Emergency Task Force officer Calum de Hartog, and was executive produced by Peter Raymont and Janice Dawe of White Pine Pictures. It premiered on January 8, 2013, and aired new episodes through November 25, 2013.