THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S WEEKLY May 18, 1977

The "soapie" they said wouldn't last

The National Nine Network is proud of the success of "The Young Doctors", and so is the cast of the show…

The Young Doctors is the Australian soap opera that the critics said would not last. Yet now, six months after it first went to air and drew back the curtain on life and love at the Albert Hospital, the series is still scoring high ratings.

The Nine Network, which screens the show, has commissioned another 26 weeks from the producers, Reg Grundy Productions. The cast and crew of The Young Doctors recently celebrated their 100th episode. Producer/director Alan Coleman said after the party: "The trouble with throwing a party after the 100th episode that they'll want one after every 100 episodes. That's how confident I am of the show continuing."

More for fun than for the record, Alan Coleman marked the 100th episode celebrations by announcing these statistics: in 100 show, 1000 actors had appeared in 7500 scenes and spoken 2,061,500 words from 15,000 pages of script.

The Young Doctors is incredibly popular wherever it is screened. In Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide it goes to air four nights a week, but the show's biggest success has been Brisbane, where it is shown five nights a week and grabs top ratings.

The people working on the show are jubilant over its continued popularity. Alan Coleman said the reason for the success of the serial was that viewers, especially the young, liked the high drama in the personal lives of the staff, related to the characters, were interested in the life and death situations. The show stuck strictly to the advice given by their medical advisers, he said. "Doctors" has three such advisers.

Coleman believes critics panned the show because they hated "soapies". "But we've pulled out all stops to get production values good and right. For example, we had a week long break recently and sent members of our production crew to a hospital and they actually watched operations being performed," he said.

Actor John Walton, who plays the lecherous Dr Craig Rothwell in the show said The Young Doctors had improved out of sight since production began. "In America they spend $250,000 to $1 million on one episode of a show and shoot it over two weeks. We don't have that kind of budget and time. But in spite of that I don't believe their shows are better than ours. We've got a lot of talent here." Gillian Chalmers

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