Weekday afternoons become prime time for fans of hospital soap operas.

In the early 1970s, the ITV network increased its broadcast hours, opening slots (and growing advertising revenue) on weekday afternoons. General Hospital (1972-79), produced by ITV franchise company ATV, was one of the daytime serials designed to fill that slot and aired twice a week. Viewers were already familiar with the genre conventions of a hospital drama, as General Hospital was conceived in the mould of Emergency Ward 10, which ran for a decade on the ITV network from 1957 to 1967.

Watching this first episode of General Hospital, it is clear that the drama was not sensationalised. It stemmed as often from the interpersonal conflict between medical staff as from the medical emergencies they attended. In one scene, Dr Peter Ridge (Ian White) loses his temper because a GP (Ronald Leigh-Hunt) comes to visit his patient unannounced.

While the relatively sedate pace can seem jarring for a medical soap, including outpatient clinics allowed for some vital representation of health issues, such as the example in this episode of Mrs Lawrence (Cynthia Powell), whose iron deficiency could indicate sickle cell disease, however, there remain many old-fashioned qualities to the script and plotting of General Hospital, particularly in the way the middle and upper-class male doctors speak to and about patients and nurses. And though General Hospital was relatively gentle and calm, it was still a soap opera. Watch this episode to the very end, and you will be met with a soap opera plot classic: a character with amnesia.

An accident victim arrives in casualty. Young Leonard Tate is admitted after an outpatient appointment reveals he has failing kidneys. Albert Unsworth has doubts about how 'routine' his hernia operation is after a chat with Miss Finch in the dayroom. Dr Ridge has a heated confrontation with GP Dr Thorne.