So where’s Holby now?

In the first days of Casualty it was taken as read that Holby was Bristol. The Clifton Suspension Bridge, one of England’s most recognisable landmarks, seemed to have a regular guest spot. While the regular cast had accents that represented a cross-section of the United Kingdom and Ireland (not to mention the ‘comedy’ Polish porter, Kuba), the guest actors helped provide a sense of place: this was most definitely a Bristolian venue.

As time went on, though, that softened. The cast member with the strongest Bristolian accent, Duffy (Cathy Shipton), gradually lost it, ending up with a soft, almost RP, brogue, while ambulance driver Sandra Mute (Lisa Bowerman), the only other locally accented hospital employee, was killed off at the start of the second series. And as the supply of guest actors in the region dried up, gradually Holby became a melting pot, attracting young homeless kids speaking Glaswegian, Welsh families, Geordie transvestites with Cornish grandchildren… over the past twenty years, you could pull ‘accent’, ‘occupation’ and ‘hidden secret’ out of separate hats, and the resulting combination is pretty likely to have been wheeled into the Holby ED at some point.

Even then, though, the programme’s frequent forays into the city of Holby have retained some semblance of a physical sense of place. Clifton may make fewer appearances now, but other parts of Bristol’s rejuvenated city centre have been used as backdrops. At some point in the future, though, the whole city will be getting a makeover. Holby Bay will be getting its own Millennium Centre, one can suppose, and for a while at least, the clientele will be taking on a distinctly Welsh colour.

Will the characters notice? Well, they tend not to notice when their entire department gets repainted overnight, or when the exterior of the department changes from the beautiful stone facade of City of Bristol College’s Ashley Down campus to a concrete fabrication on a studio backlot, so my guess is not. But elsewhere in the building, the people who work in Keller Ward (as documented in Holby City) may be shocked to learn they have to cross the Severn every time they venture downstairs…

Which leads to another question. Given that Casualty’s move is part of a wider BBC drive to move drama out into the ‘Nations and Regions’, in Corporation terminology, why not move Holby City — shot in Elstree, near to EastEnders — out there too? While production of the two series could, and should, remain independent of one another, at times it has felt as if the two dramas are set in completely separate hospitals. That feeling can only increase if the series are produced in separate nations.