It was created by the same team behind the sketch show Smack the Pony – Channel 4 commissioner Caroline Leddy and producer Victoria Pile – and stars Mark Heap, Tamsin Greig, Stephen Mangan and Julian Rhind-Tutt.

Caroline works alongside two other doctors: Guy Secretan (Stephen Mangan), an arrogant, half-Swiss, womanising anaesthetist, and "Mac" Macartney (Julian Rhind-Tutt), a suave, fashionable surgeon.

Other people Caroline meets include Martin Dear (Karl Theobald), a friendly house officer who is constantly failing his exams.

Their relationship is an open secret, with student doctor Boyce (Oliver Chris) often hinting at it when goading Alan.

Joanna's staff include Kim Alabaster (Sally Bretton); Naughty Rachel (Katie Lyons); Harriet Schulenburg (Olivia Colman), an overworked mother of four trapped in an unhappy marriage; and Karen Ball (Lucinda Raikes), who is often bullied by Kim and Rachel.

Unusually for a British sitcom, which typically has only one or two writers, the show had eight: Pile, her husband Robert Harley,[4] Gary Howe, Stuart Kenworthy, Oriane Messina, Richard Preddy, Fay Rusling and James Henry.

Pile and her co-writers initially used battery packs to represent characters, moving them around on her desk to develop scenarios for the show.

[7] The music, which features prominently in the show, was written by Jonathan Whitehead (under the name "Trellis") and won him an RTS Craft & Design Award.

Scenes from the pilot were used in the first episode, "Caroline's First Day", and can be spotted due to the characters' appearance, most notably Rhind-Tutt's haircut.

This presented a problem because the show had to work around the real-life hospitals, with their actual doctors, patients and emergency situations.

[11] Pile originally wanted the show to cover the entire hospital, not just doctors, but porters, car park attendants and kitchen staff.

Both women are devastated to find that Mac is intending to move to Sheffield with his new girlfriend to take up a consultancy position.

Sue asks Martin, Joanna, Guy, and Alan for the money, which she eventually manages to raise, but Mac runs off before she can get hold of him.

Caroline distances herself from Mac and starts dating Jake Leaf (Darren Boyd), a complementary therapist.

When Alan becomes unusually happy after winning an internet caption competition, Joanna seeks to destroy his good humour.

After the death of a patient known as "Yo-yo Man" who offers them wise advice, Guy, Mac and Martin all decide to propose to Caroline.

Mac then tells Caroline to meet him at the railway station for a weekend away, but then suddenly discovers that he is terminally ill, and rides off into the distance on his motorbike.

The episode concludes with Caroline being carried into the air by a mass of helium filled balloons at the wedding reception.

Caroline is now a medical pioneer in the USA, Guy has become a TV personality, and Mac has returned from several near-death experiences to continue working as a surgeon.

Following their murder spree Joanna is now in prison, while Statham's lawyers got him a reduced sentence involving psychiatric care, and he is now working under Boyce.

Cathy Pryor in The Independent on Sunday said that, "Sadly, though, since I'm something of a fan, I have to report that the first episode of the second series is, disappointingly, rather flat.

To be fair, there were a couple of laugh-out-loud moments - Dr Statham banging his head and falling down being one of them - but the whole [thing] didn't quite gel.

When the first series was broadcast, he praised the cast and characters, but commented negatively on the filming style and dramatic qualities.

The story lines were negligible; there were no catch phrases; it was surreal in a way we hadn’t seen since Monty Python; and the cast were actors being funny from inside a characterisation, not stand-up comics bolting a cartoon persona onto the back of gags.

Within two minutes, Green Wing had destroyed itself, lost its assured grip on the cliff of comedy and tumbled into the abyss of embarrassing overacting, formless gurning and pointless repetition.

The lack of plot and coherent narrative that previously had been a blessed freedom was revealed to be a formless free-for-all, brilliant performances as silly mannerisms.

[28] Greig received a BAFTA nomination for Best Comedy Performance in 2005, losing to David Walliams and Matt Lucas.

[29] A third series of Green Wing was not made, due to scheduling difficulties with the cast and crew undertaking new projects, and a lack of budget at production company talkbackTHAMES.

However, creator Victoria Pile mentioned in a 2007 interview in the Radio Times that she may create a spin-off, saying, "I'm hoping to do another Channel 4 comedy imminently, possibly starring some of the same cast.

[32] Green Wing appeared in an episode of the BBC documentary series Imagine, entitled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Studio.