Cops and docs have always been popular on British television. From Dr Kildare and Z Cars in the early 1960s to ER, Morse and The Bill, they have been the most consistently successful television genres of all. Cowboys may come and reality television may go, but police and hospital dramas are always with us.
What is different today is not just their popularity but their diversity. Casualty and Holby City, Dalziel and Pascoe and The Bill pull in audiences of between 5.5m and 7.3m with their formula of soaps and human interest. At the time of writing, four of BBC1's top ten shows are cops and docs. And then there are the smart US imports—CSI and ER, House and Grey's Anatomy, Nip/Tuck and Scrubs—some of the cleverest, most talked-about shows on television.
What is the appeal of these shows? Some reasons are obvious. The intrinsic drama of cops and robbers and the life and death decisions of casualty wards are straightforward enough. All human life is here: drug addicts and drunks, wife-beaters and poor pensioners.
However, the dynamic of medical shows, in particular, has changed since the 1960s. Leslie Halliwell and Philip Purser once wrote: "The classic formula in medical-men series comprised young doctors who had to learn that Experience and Wisdom still count, irascible old mentors who had occasionally to acknowledge that New Ideas can work." This was true enough when they were writing, almost 30 years ago. They were talking about 1960s shows like Dr Kildare (1961-66) and Dr Finlay's Casebook (1962-71), which caught the moment of transition from the wise local GP and old-style hospital doctor to the new high-tech medicine of the 1960s.
One person changed all that: Steven Bochco. Halliwell and Purser were writing in 1979, two years before Bochco's Hill Street Blues (1981-87) and seven years before his LA Law (1986-94). These shows introduced three key elements: the multi-ethnic team, a mix of drama and comedy, and several intertwining plots, all shot in a distinctive fast, choppy style. These were the progenitors of Michael Crichton's ER (1994- ) and every fast hospital and police drama since.
What is interesting is the shift from the individual to the group, from the wise old doctor/handsome young intern to the team that works together. None of them seem to have a family life, and parents only drop in for one traumatic episode before flying home. It is a young world, with lots of opportunities for sex and affairs. There is something which appeals to us today about being part of a team. Hence the fascination with one recurring shot: a group of people walking down a corridor in slo-mo towards the camera. Think of Hustle or the opening credits of House and a number of current television ads.
The team is not just any team; it is a multi-ethnic team. Look at the trailers for Grey's Anatomy: the tall handsome black doctor, the competitive Korean, the sexy white male and Grey herself. Or take House's team: one young black male, one young blond and a babe. Compare this with the mono-ethnic world of the US sitcom: white comedies for white audiences, black comedies for black audiences, and rarely the two do meet. Think of Seinfeld, Frasier, Roseanne, Cheers and Friends—whiter than any shirt washed by Persil.
There is something else about the team. The women are young and attractive: Meredith Grey, the eponymous lead of Grey's Anatomy, her housemate Izzie, a former lingerie model, and Cameron in House, who has an on-off love interest with House. The men are equally beautiful: Preston Burke and Derek Shepherd in Grey's and Dr Chase in House. Godard once said, "All you need to make a film is a girl and a gun." All you need to make a television hospital drama is a girl and an MRI scan.
Of course, these doctors are not just good-looking. They are smart, articulate and, above all, high-tech. Does anyone use a stethoscope or thermometer in these shows? Who mentions penicillin? There are no GPs in this brave new medical world. House and Grey's Anatomy are set in state of the art hospitals, miles from the ghettos of inner-city America. That is why, although some of the doctors are black, the patients—with their mysterious syndromes and strange illnesses—are usually suburban white. This is the world of Patricia Hewitt's dreams. No underpaid nurses, no budget crises, unlimited resources and the latest technology.
The other striking feature about these dramas is that they have nothing to do with the two classic settings of traditional television shows. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the classic setting for sitcoms and soaps was the family home (Steptoe, Till Death Us Do Part, Roseanne, Cosby) or the neighbourhood (Coronation Street, Eastenders, Brookside). Sometime in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a huge cultural shift in television drama away from these settings to new loyalties and collective identities: yuppy friends (Cheers, Seinfeld, Friends) and the young urban professional team (LA Law, ER, Scrubs, Grey's Anatomy).
It is no coincidence that a recent episode of Dr Who brought together his new team: sexy young woman, young black male and the doctor, flying through time and space together, with no roots, no fixed identity, no home. The original old doctor (William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee) has gone. Too old, too wise. Old people and old forms of identity have no place in the post-1980s world of cops and docs.
