History of the National Health Service Emergency Ward 10 was first broadcast in 1957 on ITV and ran until 1967 and followed the life and loves of the staff and patients of the fictionalised Oxbridge General. ITV later followed this up with General Hospital which borrowed much from Emergency Ward 10 in terms of its themes and focus. The idea of a medical hospital as a suitable and popular setting for a soap opera continued to take root in the 1980s. Casualty, set in an A&E department, was first broadcast in 1986 and has since become the longest running medical drama in the world. At a
Mercy (TV series) score of 41 of 100 from the review aggregator Metacritic, and received mixed to negative reviews from critics. Matthew Gilbert, from "The Boston Globe", referred to the show as "a bunch of played-out hospital clichés" and said it "follows the hospital melodrama blueprint way too closely." Similarly, a review in "The Hollywood Reporter" calls the show "just another hospital soap opera" and "a lethal cocktail of virtually every medical drama ever seen on TV". Matt Roush of "TV Guide" wrote "Nurses deserve better than this ludicrous potboiler". Several critics have referred to "Mercy" as a weak copy of Showtime's "Nurse