Reception
"In this pale British imitation you can almost smell the stench of hospital food and disinfectant. Like an NHS training film, the camera spins round, ER– style – and lo, frames a shot which cuts off one of the lead actor's noses. The medicine is way too graphic, showing full–screen open–heart surgery; the characters are too unsympathetic, with not a heartthrob alive or dead in sight; and the story lines are so drawn out and laborious that on the medical drama scale, Holby City is a flatliner."
—The Sunday Herald, contrasting Holby City with ER.The series received mixed reviews from critics. Graham Keal of the Birmingham Post wrote of the first episode: "Heretical as it might seem, I liked Holby City more than Casualty, not least because the formula is so much more flexible and unpredictable." Peter Paterson of the Daily Mail praised the series for breaking away from the "dreary sameness" of Casualty, and for presenting "a less hopeless view of the NHS." His only concern about the series was its continuation of patient storylines from Casualty, writing: "if that happens too often, the new programme will soon lose its freshness and sparkle." The Mirror's Charlie Catchpole wrote that he was "sick of the sensitive, hand–wringing, non–judgmental do–gooders who mope around the A&E department in Casualty", praising in comparison the "pushy, ambitious, cynical and generally thoroughly unpleasant surgeons" in Holby City.
Sam Wollaston of The Guardian received the series positively, writing: "Holby City has everything you want from a hospital drama: good–looking staff, a bit of love interest, a dishy doc, the odd current issue (no beds, badly–paid nurses) and bits where you have to look away", deeming it: "Pretty good, really." Stan Hey of The Mail on Sunday observed that on the strength of the opening episode, the series' success seemed "fairly assured". He noted that: "characters are only skin–deep as yet, being subsidiary to the plot, but a successful graft should be achieved during the series." Kathleen Morgan of the Daily Record praised the casting of French and Griffin, writing: "It will take a couple of episodes before both actors shake off their soapy history, but with some decent plots and good lines, they should make the grade." Morgan deemed Irving the star of the show, and commented: "With Irving in the driving seat, Holby City looks like it is on the right track."
Andrew Billen of the New Statesman also found Irving as Meyer the series' "most compelling character", though deemed Holby City mediocre and its storylines "safely unoriginal". Billen compared Holby City negatively to the American medical drama ER, opining that the former show has a meandering pace in comparison to the latter's briskness, and that ER has a higher calibre of actors. The Sunday Herald also compared the series unfavourably to ER, writing that Holby City served to highlight ER's "true sophistication". Morgan refuted these negative comparisons, however, writing that: "The sign of great drama is when a scriptwriter and director can make a symphony out of a few notes and Holby City's creators have done that. It doesn't have the budget of ER, but it is proving just as compelling."
Read more about this topic: Holby City (series 1)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
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“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
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