Holby City fans are preparing for the finale of the beloved BBC One show, with a recent hospital bombshell marking “the beginning of the end”.
Staff at the hospital received crushing news on Tuesday night’s episode after they were told they will face another Clinical Strategy Directorate inspection.
Jac Naylor (Rosie Marcel), Eli (Davood Ghadami) and Madge (Claire Burt) have fought to turn things around in time for the CSD examination, after the disastrous CQC inspection.
But Jac is juggling attempts to save the hospital with her personal health struggle, which she revealed to colleague Henrik Hanssen (Guy Henry) in scenes that aired in August last year.
Despite the brain tumour diagnosis, Jac has silently battled her symptoms to present the hospital progress to the board, with the hopes of pulling it out of special measures.
Fletch (Alex Walkinshaw) was confident in Jac’s ability, but she is tragically told her efforts will not be enough for the staff to catch up with workload.
Jac, Henrik and Max are informed that all specialist surgical wards will probably be relocated to a site in Saint James' hospital.
Holby City fans were left distraught by the news, with several weeks to go before the grand finale of the BBC One show’s 23-year-run.
One took to Twitter to write: "It really is the beginning of the end."
Another second said they were “heartbroken” to watch Holby City end like this.
A third wrote: “Another three months? Aww... I just realised that Holby City is literally going out in real-time. Please #SaveHolbyCity! There are so few shows like this now and quite frankly, we need them.”
“Can't get over the writing the Holby staff are literally trying to save Holby,” added a fourth.
The medical drama, which has been running since 1999 and was spun-off from Casualty, is now scheduled to conclude in March and it was axed last year.
The cast finished filming the final scenes of Holby City at the end of last year.
When Holby’s cancellation was announced, a statement from the BBC said: “We are incredibly proud of Holby City but it’s with great sadness that we are announcing that after 23 years, the show will end on screen in March of next year.
“We sometimes have to make difficult decisions to make room for new opportunities and as part of the BBC’s commitment to make more programmes across the UK, we have taken the difficult decision to bring the show to a close in order to reshape the BBC’s drama slate to better reflect, represent and serve all parts of the country.”
