Angels (And A Bit About Casualty)

Angels 1981 opening titles.

Angels was a BBC series which changed track dramatically. Devised by Paula Milne, it began in 1975 as a seasonal drama series, thirteen fifty minute episodes per year, each episode focusing on a specific student nurse at the fictitious St Angela's Hospital in Battersea, London. One of the show's directors was Julia Smith, who would go on to create EastEnders with Tony Holland in the 1980s.

Early Angels producers included Morris Barry and Ron Craddock.

Firstly, lets dispel the myth that Angels was the first TV medical drama to illustrate that staff working in hospitals in the UK were NOT exclusively white. Emergency - Ward Ten had featured Joan Hooley as surgeon Louise Mahler, and General Hospital gave us Carmen Munroe as Sister Washington.

The original Angels format was not thrilling, it was slower and more in-depth than what came later, but some of the stories were pretty darned good. As for grit, the 1980s and even the 1960s could beat it hands down (Cathy Come Home take a bow!), but it did try to be more documentary-like than previous hospital-based dramas, and did not try to present young nurses as alcoholics, yobs or nicompoops, subjects for tremendous concern, stupidly infantile at times, which is what happened to some extent later.

Later...

In 1979, big changes were afoot at St Angela's as Julia Smith became the producer of Angels, and the show switched to a twice weekly soap opera format - thirty-four thirty minute episodes per year. Julia had always felt that the serial format would suit the show. It was not an all-year round soap though and that seemed strange. We had a part-time soap.

It took some time, but Julia tracked down Tony Holland, with whom she had previously worked on the long-running Z-Cars series, and he became Script Editor on Angels.

The new soapy Angels moved into 1981 by moving away from its original setting: St Angela's Hospital, Battersea, was replaced by another fictitious hospital, Heath Green, Birmingham. The transition took place over a few episodes, with the show skipping between the two settings, but then Heath Green reigned supreme, although the St Angela's insignia remained a prominent part of the opening titles.

Very odd.

And Heath Green was even more boring than dear old St Angela's. The somewhat grotty and antiquated Battersea hospital had been a more interesting and atmospheric setting than bright, new Heath Green somewhere in the English Midlands.

St Angela's Hospital, Battersea. St Angela's. 'Angels'. Geddit? In late 1981, St Angela's was left behind forever - but not in the show's opening titles.

The Angels were now not only women - Martin Barrass appeared as a token male nurse. Later, there was another one, who was a boxer in his spare time.

The new soapy Angels were not very angelic - they were on the Pill, having drink problems, and generally being young women of the early 1980s. Or Guardian reading scriptwriters' view of young women in the 1980s.

Some of the viewers did not like this, the alcoholism story-line was particularly unpopular, but Julia Smith said:

"There are a lot of tensions in a young nurse's life; it's no wonder some turn to drink. When you're just eighteen you've got a lot of growing up to do."

Really? Depends on life experience and attitudes, surely? I've known some very mature eighteen year olds myself. But Ms Smith too often took a dim view of human nature in my view, and her middle class social worker attitude thoroughly irked me.

'We're going to show you lots of problems and make you aware!' seemed to be her attitude. 'And we're going to say and do lots of controversial things! We are heightening awareness!' Oh, do go away! Shaggy dogs can be too darned shaggy. TV drama should be all about balance.

Some real life nurses were unhappy with the show too - complaining that the sometimes slobby baggages on-screen were not like real nurses at all. Angels chief non-angel Rose Butchins (Kathryn Apanowicz) came in for particular criticism. Rose ended up in court on an assault charge in 1981.

Soap historian Hilary Kingsley wrote about the end of the road for Angels in her 1988 book Soap Box:

Angels ended after nine series in the autumn of 1983, never having been granted the round-the-year status of a 'real' soap - perhaps because no group of characters was lovable enough or at least around long enough to become loved.

Angels definitely upped the "grit" rating in UK hospital soap drama a little, but it was not as influential as some history-rewriting modern day pundits claim. Casualty, which began in 1986 was breathtakingly political, gritty, and topical - a major departure.

Hilary Kingsley wrote of Casualty:

It was aggressively different from 'Angels' and closer to the American hospital-amid-chaos series 'St Elsewhere'...

Unlike 'Angels' too were the rude and rough language (aggressive patients were told to 'shut up'), the buckets of blood, gallons of tea brewed in the staffroom and healthy helpings of passion.

I preferred early Casualty to Angels. The pronounced left wing bias of the Holby saga (matching my own) and fearlessly gritty portrayal of hospital life in the mid-1980s, cutbacks and all, left me gasping.

Casualty was truly groundbreaking.

But, being a BBC production, it also had the aroma of the middle class social worker mindset at times.

Although Angels never struck me as being particularly fascinating, it was OK in its way - and does stir a few fond memories.

And the show featured a few future EastEnders stars Shirley Cheriton, Judith Jacob and Kathryn Apanowicz - who of course, was the disliked Rose Butchins.

Actually, out of all the Angels soap era characters, I most fondly remember Rose, who slurped her food and was dead common.

But in the early 1980s I was dead common myself. Although I never ended up on an assault charge. But then I wasn't the BBC's fictional representation of a young nurse...