Holby City a minimum 50 episodes per series, delivered from December 2017 with no break in transmission and produced from the existing production base at BBC Elstree Centre. BBC Studios was announced as the winning bidder and will continue to produce the show through to 2020. "Holby City" was created by Tony McHale and Mal Young as a spin-off from the BBC medical drama "Casualty", which is set in the emergency department of the fictional Holby City Hospital. Young wanted to explore what happened to patients treated in "Casualty" once they were taken away to the hospital's surgical wards. While "Casualty" scope
Holby City is limited to "accident of the week" storylines about patients entering hospital, "Holby City" allowed the possibility of storylines about long-term care, rather than immediate life and death decisions. The series was commissioned by BBC One Controller Peter Salmon, and began airing on BBC One on 12 January 1999. Series producer Richard Stokes believes that the series' popularity stems from the fact the hospital setting presents numerous plotline opportunities, explaining: "You have licence to create life-and-death situations every week, something you cannot do in any other set piece. The interaction of the characters can be sexy and social issues also