'Doctor in Charge' was the third in the hugely successful 'Doctor' series, but the first of them to appear as a strip in Look-in.

The series was based on the books by Richard Gordon, the first of which was written in back in 1952.  After already being a series of successful films in the late 50's and early 60's, London Weekend Television took the franchise and adapted it, changing the character names and putting it in a more modern setting.

'Doctor in Charge' takes up after 'Doctor At Large', and continues the daily life of Duncan Waring (Robin Nedwell), who is still a doctor at St. Swithin's hospital, along with old chums Dick-Stuart Clark (Geoffrey Davies) and Paul Collier (George Layton).

Duncan tries to get his head down and work hard, but always finds himself on the wrong end of trouble, mainly due to some jape or con-trick thought up by Dick or Paul.

Still in charge at St. Swithin's is Duncan's nemesis Professor Geoffrey Loftus (Ernest Clark), who along with resident brown-nose Lawrence Bingham (Richard O'Sullivan) are the bane of Duncan's existence.

Of course there are a lot of female nurses in the hospital and the lads do their fair share of chasing, and this leaves lots of opportunities for the usual 'Carry on' style of humour prevalent in comedy at this time.

The strip was great fun, very well drawn and a good addition to the comedy, the series really came into it's own with the next instalment called Doctor At Sea.

"The 'Doctor in Charge' artist you list as unknown was Tom Kerr. He also drew 'Crowther in Trouble' and was the first artist on 'The Fenn Street Gang'. Other work includes 'Sgt. Bilko' and 'Get Smart' in TV21, The Monkees (IIRC) in Lady Penelope and Jack Justice in Valiant. His most widely seen work was probably the advertising strip Clarks' Commandos which would appear in several comics."

(Extra information provided by Robert Moubert - 1/2/09. Thanks to Robert, the chronology has now been amended)

 

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