In 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, the Duke of York married Sarah Ferguson in Westminster Abbey, and The Housemartins hit the UK charts. A new drama has begun on BBC One, set in the fictional town of Holby in the west of the country. Soon, each episode was drawing up to 13 million viewers.
The accident was different from the medical series that came before it. This was not Polly's portrayal of life on the medical frontier: the team's work was shown as thankless, dangerous, and often stymied by bureaucratic red tape. One of its first stars was Charlie Fairhead, played by Derek Thompson with equal amounts of humanity and introspection, and 37 years later Charlie is still there. (He is probably the oldest working Nurse in the UK: Thompson is 75 and Charlie is actually only a few years younger.)
Earlier this week, it was announced that Charlie will fill out his final rotation in the fall, with slight deviations regarding Thompson's pay (between £350,000 and £399,000). That's an awful lot of money, supposedly tied to the actor's longevity, but nonetheless a disproportionate amount when you consider that Thompson doesn't actually save lives, but just pretends to be the one who does.
Still, I'd rather have the license fee spent on him than on many of those on the corporation's payroll. Why? Nostalgia has a lot to do with it. I grew up with Charlie; Every time he took that enigmatic look into the distance, like he was in a French New Wave movie, I had a pleasant tremor of familiarity. I saw him shot in the chest by a schizophrenic, held hostage by an armed assailant, and suffered from a pulmonary embolism. His love life is only slightly less confused than Casanova's.
For many people in Britain, Thompson and Charlie are interchangeable; I'm guessing Thompson is scared on an EasyJet flight to Corfu when someone chokes on their snack box. For this reason, many actors studiously avoid being involved in protracted dramas — well, not exactly for this reason, but for the general reason that they don't want us civilians to confuse them with their characters). There is also the terrible threat of typecasting: many actors, especially on soap operas, have lamented the difficulty of finding work after being fired because casting directors can only cast them in one particular role.
William Roach has been playing Ken Barlow in Coronation Street since the 1960s. Photo: ITV/Shutterstock
Thompson has been the longest-serving actor in The Catastrophe, but other actors in the UK have continued to play their roles for much longer. The most famous example, of course, is William Roach, who played Ken Barlow in Coronation Street since its launch in 1960. June Spencer was Umbridge's humorless matriarch Peggy Woolley for 72 years until she finally retired last year at the age of 102. Patricia Green, who played Jill Archer, has been on television since 1957, which means she's started working for the BBC, which still had Program 3, Richard Dimbleby, The Potter's Wheel and Truce for Toddlers.
While devoting your life to one character may not be very beneficial for your career, it is extremely rewarding for viewers. A sense of continuity is important to fans of any long-running drama because it creates the illusion of reality that shows like Catastrophe should thrive on. In real life, people like Ken Barlow would probably have lived on the same road for more than half a century, although it could be argued that Ken, who was educated in red brick, would have left his working-class roots long ago and settled in a nice Victorian house. terrace in Didsbury.
When a new broom producer starts working on a show like EastEnders, you can always tell. Famous characters are killed off in an attempt to boost ratings: this happened, for example, in 1997, when new Coronation Street executive Brian Park ordered the implausibly dramatic exit of two longtime actors, Jeff Hinsliff and Peter Baldwin.
June Spencer played Peggy Woolley on The Archers for 72 years and retired at age 103
It's always a mistake, a quick fix that ends up tearing the fabric of the program: shows like this are about characters, not plot lines. Characters like Charlie, Ken and Jill play a key role in the success of the show, its heartbeat, even if sometimes they appear just in the background.
They also represent a kind of soft power for the programs in which they appear and are critical to their place in the national consciousness. Even if you've never watched Casualty, chances are you know who Charlie is. As far as the BBC as a public service is concerned, Thompson's contribution has been significant.
I wonder how Casualty will fare without Charlie Fairhead. No one is «more than a show» and yet I can't quite contain the stab of regret that he's leaving. For Thompson, this must be very strange. He's a fine, versatile actor, despite what a lot of people are saying online: if you don't believe me, check out the IRA Channel 4 drama The Price, which aired a year before Casualty began. However, he walks away knowing he will never reach that level of recognition again.
Still, as I once said to a slightly grumpy former EastEnders star who refused to talk about past glory, it's better to be remembered than -That. Actors wary of type casting should understand that most of us don't remember anything at all.
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