BBC2's Hospital to move out of London for third series
The acclaimed documentary series will be shot in a major medical centre outside the capital, RadioTimes.com can reveal
If you’ve been marvelling at series two of Hospital – the BBC2 documentary strand following staff and patients at St Mary’s Paddington in London (which opened with a stunning episode about the Westminster terrorist attack) – then you might be interested to learn that a third run is in the works, and will be set inside a different Hospital outside the capital.
Executive producer Simon Dickson tells RadioTimes.com that work has already begun on the new series which is set to examine the workings of a new major medical institution.
“It’s time to move on now,” he said. “We want to freshen up the places we have seen on screen and look at how different hospitals in different part of the country do things.”
Dickson added that he is talking to various Hospital Trusts, with interest said to be “keen” in many parts of the country.
“After the first series of Hospital a lot of interest was sparked and I think it’s fair to say that people were quite impressed with the relationship we built up with the Trust we have worked with on two series now.
“It’s always good if they have a pioneering research arm and do innovative stuff and more important they have got to want us in there. Some have said they do and others have said that it would be too much for us to tolerate at this point in time."
Last week’s first episode of Hospital showed footage of the moment Westminster Bridge terrorist Khalid Masood arrived in hospital following his deadly assault on 22nd March.
The rest of the episode focused on three patients – French teenagers Yann and Victor, and Stephen, an unassuming young Englishman who was visiting London with his wife Cara to celebrate his 40th birthday when he was struck by Masood’s vehicle and his life was changed forever.
Viewers were impressed by the episode which achieved the highest overnight audience ever for the programme with 2.2m viewers (an 11.9% share of the total audience).
According to overnight figures, the first series launched with 2.1m in January and averaged 1.9m (8.8%) across the series.
Episode two of Hospital airs on Tuesday and focuses on the dilemmas faced by clinicians in providing expensive cancer drugs.
Hospital episode 2 is on BBC2 on Tuesday 27th June at 9pm
