The hospital TV soap Holby City will come to an end next year after 22 years on screen, with a former longstanding star of the show saying cast members were blindsided by the news. Hugh Quarshie, who played the role of Ric for 19 years and was the longest-serving cast member in Holby City before leaving last year, said that he was “taken aback” to hear the news and that his former colleagues were “reeling too”, having effectively been given six months notice before they lose their jobs. “My understanding is they only found out an hour before released to the press – so no one saw this coming,” he added. Former and current stars spoke out on social media to say they were saddened at the news, with the actor Davood Ghadami, who left EastEnders to join Holby City as the consultant cardiothoracic surgeon Eli Ebrahimi, saying “it will be sorely missed”. The Casualty spin-off, created by Tony McHale and Mal Young, debuted in 1999, following the lives of staff at the fictional Holby City hospital, the same hospital as Casualty. The former Holby star Joe McFadden, whose character Raf di Lucca died in 2017, tweeted: “Such sad news about the end of Holby City – it kept so many people in work for so long. My thoughts are with friends in the cast and crew.” The EastEnders actor Danny-Boy Hatchard tweeted: “Such a shame Holby is coming to an end. Sending big love to all the actors and members of staff who work on the show.” Ghadami tweeted that he had worked on the show for only a couple of months “but it’s already very clear that it’s a great big family, not a workplace. It will be sorely missed. Let’s go out with a bang”. Quarshie said the reason people liked working on the show was because of the cast and crew. He added that he would have liked storylines in recent years to focus more on the medical side of things rather than the personal relationships between doctors. “I wanted a sustained long storyline on prostate cancer, and had a great idea for a whistleblower storyline,” he said. “I am not sure whether they considered upping their game, making it more like ER rather than Doctors … Or if it is true they wanted to produce more stuff out of London, they could have moved to the same studio as Casualty,” he added, saying that he had believed the BBC was really committed to going down the road of “high-end drama”. Quarshie said the show still had a loyal following and that social media was full of people “up in arms” about it being cancelled. “More power to them,” he said. A statement from the broadcaster said: “We are incredibly proud of Holby City but it’s with great sadness that we are announcing that after 23 years, the show will end on screen in March of next year. “We sometimes have to make difficult decisions to make room for new opportunities and as part of the BBC’s commitment to make more programmes across the UK, we have taken the difficult decision to bring the show to a close in order to reshape the BBC’s drama slate to better reflect, represent and serve all parts of the country. “We would like to take this opportunity to thank the amazing team at BBC Studios and all the cast and crew who have been involved in the show since 1999. “Holby has been a stalwart with audiences, delighting millions of viewers each week and winning hundreds of awards with a compelling mix of cutting-edge medical stories and explosive personal stories.” Earlier this year, the BBC said it would move some of its key departments and staff outside London to make the corporation more reflective of the UK as a whole. It announced it would launch two new soap-style drama series – one from the north of England and another from one of the nations – over the next three years. Holby City is filmed in Elstree, Hertfordshire, just outside London. Leslie Ash, Patsy Kensit, Jane Asher, Robert Powell, Adrian Edmondson, Alex Walkinshaw and Jemma Redgrave are among the stars who have appeared in the show over the years.