A screenwriter has described the decision to axe the daytime drama Doctors as “disastrous” and said soaps are collapsing as he marked the last day of filming the show.
The BBC announced in October the show would end in December this year due to “super inflation in drama production”.
The BBC also cited “further investment” to refurbish the Birmingham production set as being behind the decision to end the show.
Doctors, which is set in a Midlands GP practice, launched in 2000 and has featured many household names, including the Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke, Ruthie Henshall, the Fantastic Beasts film franchise actor Eddie Redmayne and Sheridan Smith.
In a long thread on X, Philip Ralph said as a writer on the show for 19 years he had been “personally impacted” by the “disastrous decision” to cancel the soap.
Ralph said Doctors, in its 24-year history, had given “opportunity and experience” to budding actors, writers and production staff.
“Over 600 guest actors every year likewise got the chance to work, be seen, renew their faith in their abilities, and keep going,” he said. “A writing team of up to 60 writers crafted original, bonkers, moving, real (and often surreal!) stories based around the lives of our regulars.”
He said there was nowhere for TV workers to find the experience to get into the industry. “The TV industry is contracting,” said Ralph, who had also worked on Holby City, which was axed in 2021.
“Production across the board is way down. Bectu [the union] recently surveyed its members and found 68% of them are out of work. Doctors was a much-needed ‘finger in the dam’ of this terrible situation. And now it’s gone with nothing to replace it.
“Without opportunity and experience, the TV industry is simply not a sustainable profession. Now you might well point me towards a million schemes and opportunities for new writers, producers, and crews to gain early career experience.
“But if there is no work available for them beyond that, and even experienced creatives are unable to find work, then you simply do not have a viable industry.”
He said people from “less well-off and more diverse backgrounds” would be excluded as they will not be able to make the same sacrifices while waiting for work.
“The soaps are collapsing,” he added. “Mid-scale drama is contracting. This leaves just the high-profile writers and creatives succeeding, and everyone else scrabbling around for scraps, hoping to somehow ‘win the lottery’ and get on to an existing show or – even more miraculous in the current climate – get their own original series idea commissioned.
“There’s no ‘career ladder’ left. There’s incredible good fortune – or there’s nothing. And that’s no way to build and grow a sustainable industry.”
Ralph’s Tweet comes a week after James Hawes, the vice-chair of Directors UK and the director of the Apple TV+ spy drama Slow Horses, said television soaps could be created by AI within the next three to five years.
Hawes told parliament’s culture, media and sport committee inquiry into British film and high-end television that digitally made scripts will soon be upon us, particularly for soaps.
Hawes said: “We at Directors UK held a forum about Doctors, the BBC show that’s been cancelled. One of the members there started talking about AI and it sent me investigating how long it would be before a show like Doctors can be made entirely by generative AI.”
The BBC has been approached for comment.
