Catch up TV

Series 1: Episode 1

This episode covers the first quarter century of the service and unveils a whole host of unique artefacts, including the graduation certificate of a doctor who only qualified on the NHS's first day and yet was thrown straight into surgery, one of the last remaining roadworthy Invacars, a specialist vehicle adapted for disabled drivers that was handed out for free in the 1960s and even a tiny booklet listing a family's expenditure on doctor's fees, a stark reminder of life before the Health Service when every GP visit came with a charge.\n\nPatients and staff tell their experiences of how the NHS was not immune from the prejudices of 1960s Britain. Actress Joan Hooley shares a copy of her first performance in the ITV drama Emergency Ward 10, where her role as a hospital doctor - who happened to be both a woman and black - sent shockwaves through society. We discover how a simple pair of earrings transports their owner back to a time in which draconian attitudes towards sex nearly cost her her life. And we see how an ornate ginger jar, and the mysterious death of its owner, exposed a British class system that allowed some GPs to operate with alarmingly little oversight.\n\nBut despite an ever more fractured society, a medical revolution was happening and as the decades progressed, it was clear free access to medical care was dramatically improving the health of the nation. A leading orthopaedic surgeon reveals the ground-breaking device invented by an NHS doctor in the 50s which revolutionised hip replacement surgery, whilst the daughter of a GP unfurls an incredible scroll of records of every case of childhood disease he treated, fascinating primary evidence of the extraordinary impact of the nation's first NHS funded vaccine campaign.\n\nInspired by the remarkable objects still in their possession, this is the story of the ordinary people who make up an extraordinary service.

Source: BBC 4