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''The Royal'' is a British medical drama series produced by ITV that ran from 2003 to 2011. The show comprised one-hour episodes which were normally first aired on ITV in the Sunday early evening slot. The title of the series refers to the fictional "St Aidan's Royal Free Hospital", located in Elsinby, a fictional rural seaside town, portrayed as being close to Aidensfield, the fictional setting of the UK TV series ''Heartbeat''. The series was shot in Whitby and Scarborough, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. The Royal is an NHS hospital serving the local town, countryside and visitors. The show was set in the 1960s. It began as a spin-off from another popular ITV show set in North Yorkshire,'' Heartbeat''. Stars of the show included Ian Carmichael, Wendy Craig, Robert Daws, and Amy Robbins. The last episode of the show aired at 7.00 pm on Sunday, 31 July 2011 on ITV. ==Overview== ''The Royal'' was introduced in the 14th episode of the 12th series of ''Heartbeat'' entitled 'Out Of The Blue' and ''The Royal'' benefited from this connection to the extremely popular parent series; several ''Heartbeat'' characters appeared in the first couple of series of ''The Royal'', most notably Bill Maynard as a bed-ridden Claude Greengrass, but as the series progressed it generally dropped its character crossovers with ''Heartbeat'' to become its own entity. The majority of the plots centred around medical emergencies and the moral dilemmas created or exposed by the emergencies. Typically there are several on-going crises, each being confronted by one or more staff members. The show tends to avoid political topics on the whole (although the Vietnam War was touched upon in one episode) but the conflict between progressive and conservative social ideals is central to the show and these issues were addressed in greater detail in series 5 following the arrival of the black woman Doctor Joan Makori, who joined ''The Royal'' in episode 49. She later departed for Cameroon in episode 55 with Nkeshi a Biafran refugee. The ethical challenges and social changes faced by the hospital staff and their patients mirror those faced by the world in the 1960s. ''The Royal'' appears to be set primarily in 1969 and includes references to events such as the coming of colour television and the Vietnam War. Like ''Heartbeat'', all road tax discs bear the expiry date "31 DEC 69". However anachronisms sometimes appear, such as characters in the series 7 episode "To Love & To Lose" referring to "the new Beatles film" (there were no new Beatles films that year). Some such anachronisms are likely to be accidental, such as a reference in the same episode to a career "glass ceiling", a phrase not coined until some years later. Another inauthentic aspect is the portrayal of steam trains in this drama – the last steam locomotive passenger service was withdrawn by British Rail in 1968 and most of the local rail services in North Yorkshire were operated by diesel multiple units by the mid 1960s. An unsolved mystery in ''The Royal'' concerns the name of the hospital matron, who is referred to simply as "Matron". She never used a name throughout the series, nor was she ever referred to by one (even her niece Susie Dixon only referred to her as "Auntie"). All that is known is that her nickname during the Second World War, when she served as a nurse, was "Toffee". Filming often took place at Scarborough South Cliff by Holbeck Clock Tower during the summer months. Many of the old cars used in the filming can be seen residing at the Motor Museum at Thornton-le-Dale just outside Scarborough. Interior scenes were filmed in the former Maternity Wing of St. Luke's Hospital, Bradford and The Leeds Studios. St Luke's was chosen because it had not been updated in many years, and was very similar to how a 1960s hospital would have appeared. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Royal」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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