page_title: Holby City
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Holby City / Production / Development
caption_attribution_description: The Holby City fictional hospital set, at the BBC's Elstree Studios.
context_page_description: Holby City is a British medical drama television series shown weekly on BBC One. The series was created by Tony McHale and Mal Young as a spin-off from the BBC medical drama Casualty. It was first shown on 12 January 1999. It is set in the same hospital as Casualty in the fictional city of Holby. Some episodes have characters and plots shared with Casualty. There have been episodes broadcast as Casualty@Holby City. Some episodes have characters and plots shared with the show's 2007 police procedural spin-off HolbyBlue.
  Holby City is shown once a week, all year round. Each series now contains 52 episodes.
  The show follows the lives of medical and ancillary staff at the fictional Holby City Hospital.
  As of January 2020, twenty-one series of Holby City have been shown. It is made at the BBC Elstree Centre in Hertfordshire. It has featured episodes filmed on location abroad. From October 2010, Holby City moved to high definition broadcasting.
  The series uses a team of researchers to ensure medical accuracy. Surgeons check the scripts. Cast members are taught to perform basic medical procedures. They spend time on hospital wards for research.
context_section_description: Holby City was created by Tony McHale and Mal Young as a spin-off from the BBC medical drama Casualty. It is set in the fictional Holby City Hospital. 
  Young wanted to explore what happened to patients treated in Casualty once they were taken to the hospital's surgical wards. 
  The stories on Casualty are limited to the "accident of the week". Holby City has stories about long-term care, rather than immediate life and death decisions. 
  The series was commissioned by BBC One Controller Peter Salmon. It was first shown on BBC One on 12 January 1999.
  Since its beginning, it has expanded to cover other wards. These include a gynaecology ward, an acute assessment unit and a maternity ward. 
  Young explained that new wards are necessary to allow the crew to rotate sets.
  Episodes of Holby City cost around £370,000 to produce. This is more than the BBC soap opera EastEnders which costs £130,000 per episode. Casualty costs £450,000 per episode. As Holby City is a high-volume, year-round production, it has relatively low production costs. Set-up costs can be spread over many years. Sets can be re-used. This is not the case for shorter series or one-off dramas.
  Former Casualty producer Johnathan Young was an executive producer of Holby's first series. 
  Mal Young was executive producer of Holby City until 2004. 
  Kathleen Hutchison worked with Mal Young as co-executive producer from 2003 to 2004. She left the series to become executive producer of EastEnders. 
  In March 2011, Johnathan Young returned to the BBC as executive producer of both Casualty and Holby City.
caption: The hospital set, at BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood.
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