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Casualty 1909 Broadcast Details & Press Release
Posted on 9th June 2009
CASUALTY 1909, the latest 6-part series about life and death in the dangerous East End a hundred years ago begins transmission on JUNE 14th at 9PM on BBC ONE.
Press Release
CASUALTY 1909 returns to the London Hospital on the frontline in the teeming, dangerous, desperately poor East End. Revolution is in the air. The world is changing fast. Anarchists are suspected of bombings and ‘outrages’, Suffragettes are violently protesting, the hospital itself is under attack from animal rights activists. Fear and suspicion grip the streets, making life harder than ever for the over-taxed nurses and doctors.
Medicine too is in turmoil as new practices fight with outmoded tradition. Anaesthesia under chloroform is unreliable at best, deadly at worst, and threatens to bring scandal to the London. Battle rages between the doctors as urgent action must be taken.
CASUALTY 1909 sees the changing times through the eyes of the nurses and sisters, whose own rights are in revolution. Why can’t women be doctors? Why can’t they be married and work like the men? A new age beckons but there is conflict with Matron Luckes (CHERIE LUNGHI) who believes that ‘self-seeking must not replace self-sacrifice’.
Dramatised from extensive research into real cases, characters and events from hospital records, newspapers and personal memoirs, CASUALTY 1909 is an edgy, stylishly directed series from a remarkable time and place. Elegant and energetic, it is costume drama with a wholly modern, shocking feel.
The series features one of the strongest casts on television. Striking new faces include the extraordinary surgeon and cocaine addict, Dr Henry Dean (PAUL HILTON), the visionary eccentric, Dr Henry Head (ANTON LESSER) and the lively young Dr Edward Ingrams (TOM HUGHES). The original cast includes CHERIE LUNGHI as powerful, glamorous Matron Eva Luckes; SARAH SMART (WALLENDER, FIVE DAYS); CHARITY WAKEFIELD (SENSE & SENSIBILITY, and now the lead in the major US follow-up to ALLY MCBEAL, the network pilot LEGALLY MAD for David E Kelly); LYDIA LEONARD (THE 39 STEPS), NICHOLAS FARRELL (The Diary of Anne Frank), WILLIAM HOUSTON (Guy Ritchie’s upcoming SHERLOCK HOLMES), as well as guest stars AIDAN MCARDLE, CLARE HIGGINS and brilliant new-comer AIMEE-FFION EDWARDS.
CASUALTY 1909 is produced by BRYN HIGGINS and executive produced by CLARE DUGGAN as a Stone City North Production for BBC ONE.