Doctors series 3

The third series of the British medical soap opera Doctors originally aired between 3 September 2001 and 22 May 2002. It consisted of 129 episodes. The series saw multiple castings due to a large amount of cast exits in the previous series. These included new regulars Ariyon Bakare, Tabitha Wady, Natalie J. Robb, Tom Butcher, Nicole Arumugam and Tim Downie, amongst other recurring cast members. Wady and Arumugam departed from their roles at the conclusion of the series. The series received an average of 2.5 million viewers.

Cast
The previous series saw the departures of five regulars: Joanna Helm (Sarah Manners), Ruth Harding (Yvonne Brewster), Rana Mistry (Akbar Kurtha), Steve Rawlings (Mark Frost) and Caroline Powers (Jacqueline Leonard). This meant that executive producer Mal Young had to introduce several new regular characters, three of which were introduced together in the first episode of series three. These were: Ben Kwarme (Ariyon Bakare), a locum doctor, Katrina Bullen (Tabitha Wady), a receptionist who wants to take charge of Riverside, and Jude Carlyle (Natalie J. Robb), a working-class Glaswegian doctor. Ben and Katrina were written as characters who had begun working at Riverside between the second and third series, while Jude's first day is written in the series premiere. Young also promoted recurring nurse Faith Walker (Eva Fontaine) to a regular character.

Tom Butcher debuted a month later as Marc Eliot, a former army major and doctor who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He was followed by Kali Hamanda (Nicole Arumugam), a doctor who has an affair with Ben, and Alex North (Tim Downie), another doctor at Riverside. Katrina and Kali left at the end of the series. Alongside the regulars, two recurring characters were introduced: Jude's sister Beth (Valerie Gogan) and Mac McGuire's (Christopher Timothy) son Liam (Tim Matthews).

Main characters

 * Nicole Arumugam as Kali Hamanda
 * Ariyon Bakare as Ben Kwarme
 * Tom Butcher as Marc Eliot
 * Maggie Cronin as Kate McGuire
 * Eva Fontaine as Faith Walker
 * Natalie J. Robb as Jude Carlyle
 * Christopher Timothy as Mac McGuire
 * Corrinne Wicks as Helen Thompson
 * Tabitha Wady as Katrina Bullen

Recurring characters

 * Tara Coleman-Starr as Claire Thompson
 * Elaine Donnelly as Mavis Rider
 * Valerie Gogan as Beth Carlyle
 * Robert Harrison as Pete Stewart
 * Martin Ledwith as Richard Miles
 * Tim Matthews as Liam McGuire
 * Robert Phillips as George Kwarme
 * Joshua Prime as Dan Thompson

Guest characters

 * Hilary Drake as Fiona McGuire
 * Sally Humphreys as Bobbi Trent
 * Lisa Reeves as Lisa