Children's Ward

Children's Ward
Genre	Drama
Written by	Paul Abbott Tony Basgallop
Directed by	Steve Finn Alan Bell
Starring	Carl Rice Gilly Coman Will Mellor Anthony Lewis Ben Sowden
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	12
No. of episodes	143
Production
Production locations	Bolton, Greater Manchester, England, UK
Running time	30 minutes
Production company	Granada Television
Original release
Network	ITV Network (CITV)
Release	15 March 1989 (1989-03-15) – 4 May 2000 (2000-05-04)

Children's Ward (retitled The Ward from 1995 to 1998) is a British children's television drama series produced by Granada Television and broadcast on the ITV network as part of its Children's ITV strand on weekday afternoons. The programme was set – as the title suggests – in Ward B1, the children's ward of the fictitious South Park Hospital (known as Sparky's), and told the stories of the young patients and the staff present there. Aimed at older children and teenagers, Children's Ward was a long-lived series for a children's drama, starting life in 1988 as a contribution to the Dramarama anthology strand, "Blackbird Singing In The Dead of Night", then first broadcast as a series 1989 and running from then until 2000.

Production history

The series was conceived by Granada staff writers Paul Abbott and Kay Mellor, both of whom went on to enjoy successful careers as award-winning writers of adult television drama. At the time, they were both working on the soap opera Coronation Street, and had recently collaborated on a script for Dramarama.

Abbott, who had been through a troubled childhood himself, had initially wanted to set the series in a children's care home rather than a hospital, but this was vetoed by Granada executives. During the course of its run, however, Children's Ward won many plaudits for covering difficult issues such as cancer, alcoholism, drug addiction and child abuse in a sensitive manner. The programme won many awards, including in 1997 a BAFTA Children's Award for Best Drama, won by an episode in which a serial killer lures children to him via the internet and is – highly unusually for children's television – not eventually caught.

Welsh television producer Russell T Davies was the show's producer, and writer of several episodes, from 1992 to 1995.

The decision to end Children's Ward came in mid-2000, after transmission of the final series, and ironically came as the sole original cast member Rita May – who played Auxiliary Nurse Mags – said she had no plans to leave the show.

On 5 and 6 January 2013, the show was repeated as part of CITV's Old Skool Weekend, which celebrated thirty years of the children's strand. This was also the first time the programme was seen on the CITV Channel.

Filming location

Filmed at Bolton General Hospital (now the Royal Bolton Hospital), in Bolton, Greater Manchester. Some exterior shots (such as the exterior entrance to the children's hospital) were filmed outside the now demolished Maternity Hospital entrance at the former Withington Hospital, South Manchester.

30 Years of CITV, which aired on ITV1 on 29 December 2012, revealed that interior sets for the hospital were filmed next door to some of the Coronation Street interiors.

Characters

These are the original main characters from the first three series. Some lasted several years and appeared in subsequent series.

Character	Actor/Actress	Duration	Role
Dr. McKeown	Ian McCulloch	1989	Staff
Dr. Charlotte Woods	Carol Harvey	1989–1991
Dave Spencer	Andrew Hall	1989
Nurse/Sister Diane Meadows	Janette Beverley	1989–1994, 1996
Mags	Rita May	1989–2000
Jack Crossley	Ken Parry	1989–1991
Jan Stevens	Nina Baden-Semper	1989
Hospital Radio DJ (voice)	Ross King	1989
Social Worker Steve Bailey	Michael Bray	1989–1991
Nurse/Sister Mitchell	Judy Holt	1990–1994
Dr. Kieran Gallagher	Tom Higgins	1990–1991
Student Nurse Grahams	Margery Bone	1990–1991
Keely Johnson	Jenny Luckraft	1989–1994	Patients
Billy Ryan	Tim Vincent	1989–1991
Fiona Brett	Rebecca Sowden	1989
Darren Walsh	William Ash	1989–1991
Dawn Khatir	Leyla Nejad	1989–1990
Mathew McCann	Dean Gatiss	1990
Lisa Dixon	Rachel Egan	1990
Ian Cassin.	Paul Swaine	1998
J.J.	Chris Bisson	1990
Thea	Chloe Newsome	1990
James Boyce	Carl Rice	1990
Lee Jones	Kieran O'Brien	1990
Cal Spicer	Mark Dixon	1990
Bryony Shaeffer	Sarah Cooper	1990
Ben Rowlingson	William Mellor	1990
Mickey Bell	Stephen Graham	1990
Scott Morris	Anthony Lewis	1996-1998

• Actors to go on to other theatre and television work include; Chris Bisson, Tina O'Brien, Samia Ghadie, Adele Silva, Alan Halsall, Stephen Graham, Steven Arnold, Jeff Hordley, Nikki Sanderson, Andrew Lee Potts, Vicky Binns, Ralf Little, Anthony Lewis, Tim Vincent, Kieran O'Brien, Ben Sowden, William Ash and Jane Danson.

Tie-in publications

Novelisations

• White, Helen (1990). Children's Ward. Network Books. ISBN 0-563-36170-0.
• White, Helen (1991). Children's Ward – Deadly Enemies. Network Books. ISBN 0-563-36263-4.
• White, Helen (1991). Children's Ward – Make or Break. Network Books. ISBN 0-563-36264-2.
• White, Helen (1992). Children's Ward – Lost and Found. Network Books. ISBN 0-563-36391-6.
• White, Helen (1993). Children's Ward – On the Run. Network Books. ISBN 0-563-36726-1.
• White, Helen (1994). Children's Ward – The Crash. Puffin Books. ISBN 0-14-037350-0.

Script book

• Exact title unknown, possibly Children's Ward. Edited by Lawrence Till (contains selected scripts from the series by Paul Abbott, Kay Mellor and John Chambers), published by Heinemann Plays/Oxford in 1992.

DVD Releases

Unlike many UK shows, Children's Ward has not been available in other English-speaking countries such as Australia or the U.S.A. prior to the U.K.. In May 2011, a U.K. DVD release was announced for release in July 2011 for the first series from Network DVD. Series 2 followed in October 2011, and Series 3 in January 2012. Series 4 was originally scheduled June 2013, but as yet has not been released.

See also

• CITV
• Grange Hill
• Byker Grove

External links

• Children's Ward at IMDb