Network: Global Television Network
Broadcast Run: 2011
Broadcast Medium: Television
In July 2010 CanWest Global announced a slate of new programming in development. One of these programs was Combat Hospital, which would be
a one-hour Canada/UK co-production set in a military hospital in Afghanistan. The drama would focus on the doctors and nurses who often had to put their own lives at risk to help save the lives of others.
In January 2011 Global Television announced that the US ABC Network had picked up the 13-episode series, which was expected to debut in the summer of 2011
On March 14th, Global announced that Combat Hospital had a new working title, The Hot Zone. The series debuted on June 21st 2011, by which time it had reverted to its original title, Combat Hospital. .
Combat Hospital was a fictional medical series set in 2006 at the only military hospital providing advanced surgical care in all of Southern Afghanistan. The series charted the lives of the hospital’s resident doctors and nurses from Canada, America, the U.K. and other allied countries, as they navigated their way through the relentless life-and-death battles on the operating table, and the never-ending conflicts that arose from working in a war zone military hospital.
The cast included: Elias Koteas as Colonel Marks; Michelle Borth as surgeon Dr. Rebecca Gordon; Luke Mably as neurosurgeon Dr. Simon Hill; Deborah Kara Unger as Australian army psychiatrist Major Ada Pedersen; Terry Chen as trauma team leader Captain Bobby Trang; and Arnold Pinnock as Commander Will Royal, Chief of Nursing.
Combat Hospital was a production from Canada’s Sienna Films and the U.K.’s Artists Studio. Daniel Petrie Jr. was the executive producer. Other executive producers: Jennifer Kawaja and Julia Sereny for Sienna Films ; Gub Neal, Justin Thomson-Glover and Patrick Irwin for U.K.-based Artists Studio ; Simon Vaughan of Lookout Point. Combat Hospital was created by Jinder Oujla-Chalmers and Douglas Steinberg.
The first series ended on September 6th 2011. On October 24th ABC announced that it would not renew Combat Hospital, and without the U.S. sale to provide the necessary additional production dollars, Global found itself unable to renew the series for Canada.
Written by Pip Wedge – January, 2012