Sources

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/05/26/1179601737383.html

HEALTH experts are following Hollywood's lead and setting up a unit to encourage popular TV shows such as All Saints to present more accurate health messages to viewers.

Academics at the University of Sydney will target writers and producers of local dramas and urge them to create storylines based on timely health issues such as obesity and HIV/AIDS.

The Public Health and Media Research Network met for the first time last week to discuss how to establish closer working relationships between television production heads and health professionals.
"The blue lamp was the first film to show the police with some degree of realism...its difficult for people nowadays to understand exactly what was new because they have been so accustomed to police series, but it was literally the first film that took people behind the scenes in a police station......It was the first film that showed the kind of humdum day-to-day life of a policeman behind the counter of a police station or on the beat in his relationships with his clients, as he called them in those days"

Keating, HRF, Crime Writers, BBC, 1978

http://student.bmj.com/search/pdf/06/11/sbmj427.pdf
Realism in TV dramas

American - Realism is very effectively done when it comes to american TV dramas because very unrealistic and dramatic story lines are used. Mise en scene is very important when it comes to realism because the setting has to look as real as it possibly can in order to make the audience believe that was they see is happening.

British - When it comes to British TV dramas the producers use very realistic story lines, which doesn't make the show quite as effective as the american TV dramas.