Doctors (2000 TV series)

Doctors
Genre	Medical soap opera
Created by	Chris Murray
Starring	Full list
Theme music composer	Paul Hemmings
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	24
No. of episodes	4552
Production
Executive producers	Mal Young Will Trotter Mike Hobson
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Running time	30 minutes 45–60 minutes (special episodes)
Production company	BBC Studios Continuing Drama Productions
Original release
Network	BBC One
Release	26 March 2000 (2000-03-26) – 14 November 2024 (2024-11-14)
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Doctors is a British medical soap opera, first broadcast on BBC One on 26 March 2000 and concluded on 14 November 2024. Filmed in Birmingham and set in the fictional West Midlands town of Letherbridge, the soap follows the lives of the staff of both an NHS doctor's surgery and a university campus surgery, as well as the lives of their families and friends. Initially, only 41 episodes of the programme were ordered, but due to the positive reception, the BBC ordered it as a continuing soap opera. Doctors was filmed at the Pebble Mill Studios until 2004; production then relocated to the BBC Drama Village, where it filmed until 2024. Episodes were filmed three months prior to transmission and were typically broadcast Mondays to Thursdays at 2:00 pm on BBC One, as well as having classic episodes broadcast on Drama. It took three annual transmission breaks across the year: at Easter, during the summer and at Christmas.

During its tenure, Doctors consistently won the share of viewers in its daytime time slot, and in 2023, it averaged 1.6 million live viewers. The programme was nominated for and won numerous awards, with critics praising it for tackling issues that were considered controversial and taboo. The longest-serving cast member was Adrian Lewis Morgan, who portrayed Jimmi Clay from 2005 until the final episode. Alongside its regular cast, Doctors featured numerous guest characters who typically appeared in an episode as part of a self-contained "story of the day". Series producer Peter Eryl Lloyd estimated that at least 800 guest actors were contracted on the soap per year. Due to the large number of actors who made a guest appearance, Doctors gained a reputation for becoming "a British actor's rite of passage".^[1] In October 2023, the BBC announced that Doctors had been cancelled due to financing issues, a decision that was met with universal criticism.