Season 1
7 episodes
49 min. per episode
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At a struggling hospital, dedicated staff confront ethical dilemmas, personal sacrifices, and life-changing decisions that challenge their humanity.
Episodes
The Royal is, in the 1960s, the local hospital for the North Yorkshire town of Elsinby. Its administrator T.J. Middleditch is a benevolent figure whilst the elderly matron is firm but fair with her nursing staff. Surgeon Mr. Rose is likely to light up his pipe whilst performing an operation and Dr. Jill Wetherill is a highly confident practitioner, though she does come unstuck on a home visit and Ken the hospital porter comes a cropper trying to fit an aerial on the roof. Young doctor David Cheriton turns up for his first day at the Royal and is surprised not only at how ill-equipped it seems to be but because no one was expecting him so early.
A motor-bike crash brings a cruel end to a romantic escapade for a young couple, but elsewhere Matron assists Dr. Ormerod in bringing marital harmony to patient Dennis Cording and his wife. The porters have to deal with a rodent infestation problem and unwisely turn to patient, Aidensfield wheeler-dealer Claude Greengrass, for advice, though he keeps hallucinating that spiders are crawling all over him.
Jill Wetherill comes to learn the folly of jumping to the wrong conclusion after she suspects that older Dr. Alway has misdiagnosed a patient. David Cheriton proves himself at a car accident despite Dr. Ormerod's fears that he may have been affected by an earlier crash and Greengrass arouses the porters' suspicions after asking them to store a coffin, supposedly containing his late sister, in the hospital.
Jill Wetherill helps the Heatons, an elderly couple, whilst Sister Brigid, a secular Irish nun working as a nurse at the Royal, discovers an abandoned baby which she believes is linked to missing teenager Susan. Whilst a Russian sailor is admitted to the Royal, Greengrass attempts to play the system to ensure a longer stay for himself, whilst an official hospital inspection looms.
David Cheriton is faced with the unenviable task of telling young Francesca that she has only a short time to live, though it does lead to a wedding. Efficiency-mad Nigel Harper ruffles feathers with cost-cutting ideas, but the arrival of a famous jockey as a patient in the hospital means that the basic fund-raising scheme of having a raffle to help hospital coffers gives way, thanks to Greengrass, to having a flutter on the horses.
Set in the 1960s, this British medical drama follows the staff and patients of St Aidan's Royal Free Hospital.