I loved the series and had seen most episodes back when it was still on and was a bit sad when with the 70th episode the series was over. I can't really remember the quality of the script, if the dialogue had been kitschy or in any way stupid, unrealistic or just too hammy. But with the dialogue now in the special I often had problems.
Some characters were from the old series, revived in some cases only for an alibi line, that the producer could say:"So there, all of the old actors came back for the special". To deliver the line and to fill the background. But okay. At least these lines sounded good and were delivered in a proper way. These actors are after all good actors, even in bit parts. Some characters were new (or grown up rather) and most of them sounded wooden, unrealistic and .... yes, as if the script writer was writing for the first time. I hadn't seen the credits because my VCR started too late, so I didn't know who wrote this stuff as the old writer had died a couple of years ago. Now here on IMDb I found out what I had suspected: two writers and one of them not having much written yet. They seem to have split the list of characters in half, you take this one, I take this one, and as a viewer you can tell who wrote which. But for the film this is not very healthy.
Alexander Wussow had the best written part and he also was most convincing - although his role was amongst the new characters. An exception. I would like to see him in a "real" film in a good part, drama or something. Could be interesting. The slightly bigger nurse was worst. Sorry, dear, you need theatre practice and lots of it.
Camera work also was a bit dull. Who spoke was in the frame, changed the frame, the speaker changed. There are dozens of other ways to show something, this here was without much fantasy and looked a bit like first year film college. I would have expected a DP with more interest in what he does. Or maybe he wasn't allowed to try out something. Pity.
All in all, I was quite disappointed. Other people might see it differently, but having seen myself hundreds of films since the series stopped and dozens of other series, hospital series included, I have to say, that the special looked very much 80's style (despite massive mobile usage) and this doesn't quite work any more today, at least not for an audience younger than 60. The idea though was nice, a special after 20 years. Other series could do that, too, but please think of the script quality! Times are changing...
