For those in whose lives they have been a fixture, the departure of a familiar character from a long-running television series can seem almost like a bereavement. So it is with Charlie Fairhead, who left the BBC One hospital drama Casualty on Saturday at the climax of a classic two-parter. Over 38 years as a nurse at the accident and emergency department of Holby city hospital, Charlie had survived a shooting, an embolism and a couple of heart attacks. Such misadventures had merely enabled Derek Thompson, the actor who has played him for nearly 900 episodes, to take restorative breaks. But Charlie’s stabbing by a patient meant farewell – and a decision to retire.
Barring the death or serious indisposition of the actors involved, one can never be absolutely sure a character is gone. Just consider the succession who have made miraculous recoveries over the decades in EastEnders or Coronation Street. Thompson is about to start a new life as a retired police officer with a dodgy past in Blue Lights, set in his native city Belfast. But it looks as if this really is the end for Charlie, whose departure, on top of a reduction in the number of episodes a year, seems as ominous for the future of Casualty as the ravens abandoning the Tower of London.
