346 Angels

First  Viewed : Uncertain

I'm  not  sure  when  I  first  caught  this  series  which  had  been  running  since 1975  but  May  1978 when  it  was  switched  from  Mondays  to  Tuesdays  and  didn't  clash  with  Coronation  Street  anymore  seems  a  good  guess.  I  could  take  it  or  leave  it  but  my  mum  and  sister  were  huge  fans.

Angels  followed  the  adventures  of  a  group  of   student   nurses,  initially  at  a  hospital  called  St  Angela's  Battersea  although  the  setting  was  switched  to  a  hospital  in  Birmingham.  Despite  its  early  evening  time  slot,  the  storylines  were  quite  hard-hitting  and  caused  some  unease  with  the  suggestion  that  nurses  were  not  all  Florence  Nightingale  types  and  might  be  fallible  human  beings. This  was  typified  by  the  character  of  Rose  Butchins  played  by  Kathryn  Apanowicz,  a  loud , stroppy  nightmare.

With  its  regularly  refreshed  cast  of  attractive  young  women  in  uniforms  the show  had  a  considerable  male  following  and  switched  to  a  twice  weekly  soap  format  - though  it  wasn't  on  all  year  round - from  1979  onwards.  It  finished  in  1983  because  its  creators  Julia  Smith  and  Tony  Holland  had  a  bigger  fish  to  fry  and  some  of  the  angels ,including  Apanowicz , later  turned  up  in  Albert  Square.