Cult classic sitcom Green Wing has been resurrected as a podcast with the original cast and creative team.
Back in 2004, fresh from the success of sketch show Smack The Pony, writer Victoria Pile created Green Wing, a sitcom set in a hospital.
With an ensemble cast that included Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan – who would later reunite to star opposite Matt LeBlanc in Episodes – the comedy is helped enormously by committed clowning the cast, particularly Mark Heap and Michelle Gomez. The show ran for two series from 2004 to 2006 and, in a move more in common with American sitcoms, had a large pool of writers.
After the show ended, the same creative team made the terrific University comedy Campus in 2009, which despite only running for one series is well worth tracking down, especially for the tour de force performance from Andy Nyman as megalomaniacal monster and Vice Chancellor Jonty De Wolfe.
Now, Pile has resurrected the show as a podcast called Green Wing: Resuscitated. The synopsis, via British Comedy Guide, reads as follows:
They’re back! The all-star cast multi-award-winning cult hit comedy returns, with more surreal goings-on in the lives and loves of the doctors and staff at East Hampton Hospital (warning: contains very little medical content). Green Wing: Resuscitated picks up 12 years after the events of Green Wing, and it’s all change at East Hampton Hospital… Guy Secretan (Stephen Mangan) has become a media personality, adding TV appearances and podcasts to his work as an anesthetist; ‘Mac’ MacCartney (Julian Rhind-Tutt) has returned from several near-death experiences to pick up as a surgeon, and Caroline Todd (Tamsin Greig) has been making waves in America as a medical pioneer.
Read more: Two lost British sitcom episodes found
There have been promotions for both Harriet Schulenberg (Olivia Colman) who is now East Hampton’s Head of HR, and Boyce (Oliver Chris), who has been made head of radiology. This doesn’t mean that Alan Statham (Mark Heap) has left the hospital – while his killing spree with Joanna Clore (Pippa Haywood) lead to her being imprisoned, his lawyers got him off with a spell in psychiatric care, and he has returned to work under Boyce. Not everyone has changed circumstances, though – Sue White (Michelle Gomez) remains as East Hampton’s staff liaison officer, and Martin Dear (Karl Theobald) is still not a doctor, despite having been training for the exams since we last saw him…
All the original cast are back, along with new recruits Margaret Cabourn-Smith, Lauren Douglin, Simon Kane, Lorelei Mathias, Oriane Messina, William Sebag-Montefiore, Nimisha Odedra and Paul G Raymond.
Many of the original creative team have also returned, including writers Robert Harley, James Henry, Oriane Messina and Fay Rusling.
Green Wing: Resuscitated is available on Audible now. There are currently two offers for new subscribers: a free seven-day trial or you can pay 99p for a three month subscription. You can find the details here.
