Letherbridge, new home to everyday story of doctors.

Birmingham's latest fictional television suburb has been named Letherbridge and will be the home of Doctors, a new daily, day-time serial for BBC1.

Filmed indoors on a studio set at Pebble Mill, the BBC Birmingham series will be launched on Monday March 27 at a time still to be confirmed.

It will be the first daily drama to be made in the city since Crossroads went off screen in April, 1988, taking the fictional setting of King's Oak with it.

The cast of Doctors will be led by All Creatures Great And Small veteran Christopher Timothy and ex-EastEnders and Peak Practice star Jacqueline Leonard.

Doctors will be a collection of self-contained, 30-minute plays, linked by the regular characters, the doctors and staff. In the first episode, former Brookside star Mark Frost will be introduced as Dr Steve Rawlings, who suspects a woman of carrying out euthanasia on her cancer-stricken husband.

As Dr Caroline Powers, Jacqueline Leonard's first case will be a woman who is trying to have a baby, while senior partner Brendan 'Mac' McGuire (Christopher Timothy) will be paying a visit to a man with Alzheimer's disease.

Timothy, who filmed parts of All Creatures Great And Small at Pebble Mill, said returning to the studios was something of a homecoming. Now based in West Sussex, where he lives with his second wife, Anna, he said: 'The pace of work on Doctors is fast but not as much as I first expected. It just feels right, energetic and slick. We seem to be a good team.'

Blackpool-born Jacqueline, now based in Lytham St Anne's having taken a year off work to look after her sick mother, comes to the series fresh from her panto debut in a North Wales production of Robin Hood.

'There's a lot of humour on the set of Doctors,' she said. 'We're a good melting pot of people from all over, which reflects the cosmopolitan nature of the series.'