Casualty slammed by Ofcom over major f-word blunder

Casualty is known for its gritty realism, dealing as it does with the drama of life in an over-stretched and hectic hospital emergency department.

It’s literally life-or-death stuff, dealing with people who are coping with extremes of emotion whether they’re staff or patients. Extremes of emotion naturally means that people get a bit sweary – it wouldn’t be realistic at all if people spoke like they were at a tea party.

Although the show is suitable for the time slot it goes out on a Saturday evening, repeats of older series’ are currently shown on the channel Drama during the day, and here a different set of rules apply because of the different audience – with children possibly among the viewership at these times.

So when an episode went out in at 10.30am on June 12 with the original subtitles, some viewers will have been shocked to see some very colourful language clearly spelled out.

Two instances of the ‘F’ word appeared – even though the words were not heard on the audio as being spoken by the characters concerned.

This has led to Ofcom ruling that the programme had breached its rule prohibiting the ‘most offensive language on television before the watershed.’

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UKTV Media, which holds the licence for Drama, apologised for the incident, saying that the episode had been ‘incorrectly subtitled.

The subtitling was apparently outsourced to a company called Red Bee Media and it was said that their subtitler hadn’t ‘followed protocols’ and had been ‘disciplined and withdrawn from subtitling duties until they have been through a thorough retraining process with their line manager.’

A spokesperson from UKTV said: ‘This subtitling error occurred due to human error and we apologise for any offence caused. We have comprehensive guidance in place, which has been reshared with the subtitling team.

‘We take our commitment to providing subtitling for our viewers extremely seriously and we continue to exceed the required quota for subtitling and audio description on our channels.’

Ofcom said while it took into account UKTV had not had this issue before and took action to address it afterwards, there were no mitigating factors such as an on-air apology.

They ruled the broadcast was in breach of rule 1.14 of the code that prevents offensive language before the watershed.

Meanwhile in the current series of Casualty which airs on Saturday evenings, the drama continues with Faith Cadogan (Kirsty Mitchell) embroiled in a desperate web of lies as her drug addiction got out of control, and Donna (Jaye Jacobs) facing the consequences of her own actions.

It was recently revealed that Sunetra Sarker will be reprising her role as fan favourite Dr Zoe Hanna in the new year for some special episodes as the show prepares to say goodbye to its most iconic character, Charlie Fairhead (Derek Thompson).

The beloved nurse will hang up his uniform after 37 years of being in the show, having appeared in the very first episode.

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