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Comparison of Two Hospital Dramas: Casualty and ER Essay

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Comparison of Two Hospital Dramas: Casualty and ER

This essay will compare the two hospital dramas, Casualty and ER.

Casualty is a British hospital drama. It is shown on BBC1 at 8:05 on a Saturday evening .It has been one of the biggest and most popular hospital dramas ever made in Britain. The fact that it's lasted over ten series, has been sold to many countries around the world, and it still manages to pull in big audiences speaks for itself. The series is set in the fictional town of Holby, and is set in the hospital, Holby A+E.

ER, on the other hand, is an American based hospital drama. It is shown in America on NBC, at 10:00 on a Thursday night and also in Britain on E4, at 9:30 on a …show more content…

Disputes between doctors and nurses arise. The use of technical language is used a lot to make the viewers respect the doctors for what they are doing and make the program seem more realistic. The viewers also treat them as professionals. Doctors and nurses home life often affects their work. A doctor or nurse often has a hidden secret, which could affect his/her work. A junior doctor often disagrees with a senior doctor in a life or death situation, sometimes the junior doctor is right, but sometimes s/he is wrong.

To be successful over a long period of time and keep the same amount of audiences, though, the writers have to develop the conventions and change them slightly. They may make them more detailed.

This, as the popularity and ratings show for the two programmes, works and in my mind the two programmes are still as good as when they first started, around ten series ago.

In order to pull big audiences the two programmes use fairly attractive doctors and nurses (which, in reality is very unlikely). To pull a mix of races, the doctors and nurses, in the two shows, are of mixed race. The writers know that this will bring a bigger audience to the show. For example. If a black doctor or nurse is used, this will attract a black audience.

I think that this is very successful and attracts a larger amount of people than it would if only white doctors

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