For decades, medical dramas have been a comforting staple of television, reliable entertainment without the expectations of being groundbreaking or necessarily good. Suddenly, this genre has become a rejuvenating force in a dying landscape, thanks to two new offerings, ABC’s Doctor Odyssey and Max’s The Pitt. Both shows are generating actual conversation, attachment to characters, and anticipation for upcoming episodes. That these shows are wringing new life out of the genre that gave us ER is just one of the indicators that people are finally excited about TV again.
It’s strange to think that TV could be in need of a “comeback.” For decades, you could come home from work, sit on your coach, and enjoy a show that you could chat about the next day with your friends and colleagues. Nowadays, this experience feels more like a luxury. “Prestige” TV is seemingly on its way out, with big shows appearing and flopping before viewers can even register their existence. Meanwhile, the only televised drama people seem eager to talk about is happening on reality shows like The Traitors and Love Is Blind.
For the first time in a while, though, you can go online and sense what shows people are actually engaged with and not just mindlessly consuming. Along with Doctor Odyssey and The Pitt, there have been plenty of social media chatter surrounding series like Hulu’s presidential drama Paradise and Netflix’s romantic comedy series Nobody Wants This, which premiered last fall. The flailing prestige arena even has a few bright spots, with the third installment of White Lotus and the recently completed second season of Severance being huge talkers.
On paper, most of these shows aren’t particularly flashy or unique (okay, except for Severance). In fact, they sound like the hackneyed ideas of some uninspired network executives, from their recycled premises to their familiar casting. Yet their popularity reflects an exhaustion brought on by the streaming era and how isolated the TV-watching experience has become.
For a while, it seemed like the days of watching TV at a collective pace and falling in love with characters over a long stretch of time were gone. However, it seems like a change in consumption is upon us.
How “prestige” TV finally broke
The streaming era always felt a bit unsustainable, like a bubble ready to burst at any given time. It wasn’t just that new shows and streamers were appearing — and disappearing — at a fast rate. Suddenly, series like Stranger Things and, later, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power were requiring Marvel-sized budgets to produce. It took the Covid-19 pandemic for the system to really collapse, with shows getting canceled en masse to keep the rest of the industry afloat and recoup financially.
Even before the pandemic, the enjoyment factor of TV was becoming lost amid streaming’s lofty ambitions. Creators weren’t just aiming for the quality of storytelling demonstrated by iconic series like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men. Many shows were aiming to be a lot weirder, more cinematic, and intellectually challenging.
This didn’t always result in good TV-making. In some cases, the more unorthodox the show, the less suited it seemed for serialization.
Take, for instance, the FX comedy-drama Atlanta, which was lauded for its funny and incisive one-off episodes in its first two seasons. The show eventually took one too many narrative departures. By the time the series ended in 2022, it was hard to define the plot of the show, let alone the arc of its characters. Another popular show that suffered from its attempts at avant-garde is the Max series Euphoria. Its first season was structured less like an episodic series and more like a set of hyperstylized vignettes set around each of the show’s characters. Season two felt even more fragmented and plotless. Apparently, this loss of direction contributed to Euphoria’s third season experiencing delays.
The Bear also has demonstrated how breaking the conventions of TV can cause a show to run out of gas. In a review of season three, Jack Hamilton wrote in Slate that the innovative narrative devices in The Bear’s first season — flashbacks, long takes, and montage sequences — had become “gimmicky and tryhard.”
This isn’t just the failure of writers and creators. If scripted shows these days don’t feel built ripe for longevity, it’s also because networks and streamers haven’t been allowing them to thrive. In addition to shows being canceled early, the binge model and the speed at which viewers can blow through an entire season of television can create a sense of amnesia regarding what even aired throughout the year. These shows, with four to eight episodes all dropped at once, hardly take up any brain space after you’ve finished watching them. Nor do they inspire long-term conversation with other people, who may well not be watching at the same pace or time. Amazon’s highly anticipated Mr. and Mrs. Smith limited series highlighted this dilemma last year. Despite earning positive reviews and featuring two beloved TV stars in Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, it inspired surprisingly minimal discourse on social media.
High concepts are out. Fun, nostalgic, TV is in.
And yet, in this desiccated landscape, a new wave of oddly familar scripted programming is sparking much needed engagement. One of these shows is The Pitt, which premiered in January on Max. The show has been described as a rehash of ER, right down to its casting of Noah Wyle — who played Dr. John Carter on the former NBC series — as the show’s hunky doctor. Wyle now plays Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, an ER physician with Covid overseeing an eclectic group of doctors and medical students. Each episode takes place over one hour of a 15-hour shift, in a format similar to the Fox show 24.
Despite the fact that each episode is an hour-long circus of fractured limbs, bizarre medical mysteries, and tragic death, it’s managed to become comfort viewing for its eager fan base on X. Viewers seem particularly invested in the show’s ensemble of charming and extremely familiar archetypes — the dorky, anxious medical student, the tough intern with a dark past, the steady doctor navigating issues with her still-secret pregnancy.
Meanwhile, another show about a hunky doctor played by a beloved TV actor has become a smash hit in its first season. The Ryan Murphy-produced Doctor Odyssey stars Dawson’s Creek’s Joshua Jackson as Dr. Max Bankman, a newly hired physician on a luxury cruise ship called The Odyssey. He works alongside two nurses, and the three of them form a love triangle that eventually becomes a messy throuple. In a format similar to Murphy’s Glee, the episodes are structured by the cruise’s themed weeks — Wellness Week, Gay Week, etc. In an apparent ode to The Love Boat, it features a bunch of delightful guests, like Shania Twain and John Stamos, who provide the show’s ridiculous “sea-mergencies.”
Somehow, both medical dramas are nostalgic and refreshing. Their week-to-week scheduling brings back a traditional cadence of consuming TV, one that encourages prolonged conversation and emotional attachment to characters. There’s also the excitement of seeing familiar (and attractive) faces in protagonist roles.
Other popular shows right now seem to be benefiting from this clever casting. The recently concluded first season of Paradise stars two of TV’s most beloved dudes: This Is Us actor Sterling K. Brown and Jury Duty’s James Marsden, as a Secret Service agent and president, respectively, in unusual circumstances. The Hulu show was such a success, it’s coming to ABC in April. Meanwhile, Nobody Wants This, starring The O.C.’s Adam Brody and Veronica Mars star Kristen Bell, was practically millennial fan fiction. The show rose up the streaming charts, and was quickly renewed.
Most significantly, these new shows are purposefully fun, prioritizing action, drama, and compelling relationships. That said, it’s maybe not a coincidence that the few “prestige” shows audiences are invested in right now are The White Lotus and Severance. While these shows feature social commentary and — particularly in the case of Severance — subversive storytelling, they largely traffic in suspense and mystery, keeping viewers on their toes week by week.
Like all cultural trends, it was only a matter of time before the pendulum swung the other way. The next great era of TV might just be what streaming has been trying to change all along.
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