When is Doctors back on TV? Why BBC show isn’t on today, has it been cancelled, what happened to schedule

BBC medical drama soap Doctors is one of the most popular programmes on during its slot - regularly pulling in 1.6 million viewers as it airs. The series follows the daily lives of the staff at a Birmingham medical centre.

Often dealing with difficult patients and frustrating colleagues, the show is not without its fair share of drama. However, the series was expected to really heat up from last week, with an episode featuring a deadly bomb explosion.

Despite the Doctors Twitter account sharing a preview of the episode on Tuesday 7 February, but the following day a totally different episode aired in its place - and in the days since no episodes of the soap have aired in the slot which it has occupied since 2008.

This is why Doctors isn’t on TV this week, when the scheduled episodes will air, and how to catch up on the series:

Why isn’t Doctors on TV this week?

Eleven episodes of Doctors have been removed from BBC One’s regular schedule - the soap usually airs Monday-Friday on 1.45pm. However, the BBC did not think it would be appropriate to air the episodes that were scheduled for late last week and all of this week in the wake of the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and northern Syria.

The episodes that were originally scheduled to air from Wednesday 8 February follow a major incident when an explosion at a medical conference leads to numerous casualties. The episodes that deal with the explosion and its aftermath were deemed to be potentially upsetting.

The scenes from the show may mirror the response to the earthquakes which occurred on Monday 6 February. One of the postponed episodes was titled Aftershock, a term which can refer to a small secondary earthquake which follows a big quake.

More than 40,000 people are believed to have been killed in the quakes, with more than 150,000 made homeless, and tens of thousands of buildings across the two countries heavily damaged or destroyed. Scenes of survivors and the dead being pulled from the rubble have been shown on news channels across the world.

Instead of airing the scheduled episodes of Doctors, the BBC broadcast a compilation special of documentary programme Animal Park with Ben Fogle and Kate Humble on Wednesday 8. The following day, an episode of Doctors from later on in the series was broadcast, causing confusion among some viewers.

On Friday 10 an old episode of comedy drama series Father Brown was broadcast in the Doctors’ slot. This week from Monday to Thursday more Animal Park specials will be broadcast and on Friday 17 another episode of Father Brown will air.

When is Doctors next on TV?

Regular programming will return from Monday 20 February, with the postponed episodes airing from that date. The episode originally due to air on Wednesday 8 will air on Monday 20 and so on with episodes originally scheduled for Thursday 9 - Friday 17 airing from Tuesday 21 February - Wednesday 1 March. This is the full Doctors schedule for the next week:

All Doctors episodes from this year up to the rescheduled episodes are available to watch on BBC iPlayer now. The rescheduled episodes will be available to watch on iPlayer shortly after they are broadcast next work, when regular programming will resume.