Laughter rang out and a few tears fell as hundreds of viewers, cast and crew gathered at an RTS Midlands event to bid farewell to the BBC soap Doctors.
Fans had travelled from as far afield as Essex and Wigan to celebrate the Birmingham-made daytime drama, set in a GP surgery and axed after nearly 25 years on screen. Memories were shared during an emotional evening, held the week before the final episode was broadcast.
The novelist and writer Michael Korda wrote: “One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.” It’s a theme that was highlighted as the West Midlands Combined Authority held its Creativity Week this autumn.
Alan Carr’s Interior Design Masters has teamed up with Children in Need for a celebrity special.
The audience at this year’s RTS Midlands Student Television Awards left knowing much more about the current state of the TV industry, how to get started – and, especially, the importance of networking.
The top piece of advice from the awards host, young actor and director Theo Johnson, was to “network your socks off”.
He added: “You’re always one step away from the person who can change your life, trust me. It’s been the most important thing for me. But be polite, don’t be scary or stalkery.”
“Crisis? What crisis?” This was the 1979 tabloid headline that encapsulated the Callaghan Government’s apparent blissful ignorance of the proliferating emergencies surging towards it.
Shortly afterwards, James Callaghan was ousted and Margaret Thatcher was elected. Then followed the long and bitter miners’ strike. And we all know the consequences of that.
The cuts in unscripted TV and the cost of living crisis, said Holdsworth, the creator of upcoming Channel 4 drama Dance School, had hit the largely freelance workforce in the industry hard. “If you have to keep a roof over people’s heads… it doesn’t feel stable to be working in television at the moment. I don’t blame anyone who’s looked elsewhere,” she said.
Like a patient receiving life-changing news when they only went in for a routine check-up, last October’s BBC announcement that the long-running daytime drama Doctors was to be axed was a shock.
For more than two decades, Doctors has been part of the TV audience’s daytime routine across the nation. The final episode will be shown in December 2024, when the surgery closes its doors for ever. It promises to go out with a bang.
The RTS Student Masterclasses drew a crowd of more than 300 this month to hear four of the industry’s top talents talk about their careers and offer first-hand advice on how to make a start in television.
Inzamam Rashid, a Sky News correspondent based in the north of England, told the packed Journalism masterclass: “I always wanted to do the news, [as] a reporter, a newsreader or [working] behind the scenes.”
Since its debut in 2000, Doctors has followed the fictional lives of NHS doctors, nurses, and receptionists, as well as their families and friends. Alongside these continuing story lines, they also have a story of the week which focuses on a patient and their individual life, usually for a one or two episode arc.
The writers of the Tiger Aspect production, Guz Khan and Andy Milligan, were named Best Writers for the third year running.
Dúaa Karim, who stars as Khan’s little sister in Man Like Mobeen, won the Acting (Female) award, while the series also took the Craft – Production prize.
Hereford-based production company and charity Rural Media matched Man Like Mobeen, nabbing three awards for: Flesh (Animation); film-maker Luke Collins (Breakthrough Off-screen); and BBC New Creatives (Short-form).
