Twenty years ago, ER proved that TV medical drama could slice into an ensemble of complex characters as cleanly as a scalpel to bare the guts of what makes us all tick.
NBC’s audacious multiple-storyline juggernaut not only introduced pop culture to George Clooney over its 15-season run, but jacked the bar sky-high for any medical pretenders that followed.
Now, five years after ER flatlined, NBC is back to take another whack at the genre with The Night Shift, where doctors and nurses practise emergency medicine with the kind of edge one might get after chugging Red Bull.
"The Night Shift has already blown the doors off expectations," says Tiffany Vogt of the website The TV Addict. "In the first three episodes, they have dealt with broken hands, wild hogs running amok, jumpers, freak ambulance accidents, toxic poisoning and crazy family drama that would make anyone's hair stand on end."
While some critics have nitpicked episodes for being paint-by-numbers or predictable, the viewers have voted en masse with their clickers for this entertaining drama that borrows from real-life stories that prove truth is stranger than fiction.
In North America, where the series premiered in May, it’s the No 1 new scripted series on broadcast TV so far this summer with 7.9 million viewers and currently ranks fourth in overall audience. A supremely satisfied NBC has already ordered a second season.
The irreverent action all happens at San Antonio Memorial Hospital, where the Irish actor Eoin Macken portrays the adrenalin junkie T C Callahan who, after a gruelling tour of duty in the Middle East, now works in the emergency room. He’s discovering his hardest battle is now on the home front – the daily fight between the heroic efforts of saving lives and the hard truths of running a hospital.
“What I liked about T C was that he seemed like a really cool character that would be fun to play, but he was also quite broken,” says Macken. “I liked the fact that he was trying to hide that, all the way through, and that he was struggling with something.” Since San Antonio serves 22 counties, the hospital ER often has to dispatch T C on a helicopter to rush medical care to outlying areas – which triggers traumatic wartime flashbacks for the battle-hardened medic.
“We wanted to bring the ‘golden hour’ to the patients – to bring the military aspect of the show,” says the executive producer Jeff Judah.
T C and his team of late-night docs, including his best friend Topher (Ken Leung) and protégé Drew (Brendan Fehr), know how to let off steam with the casual prank or two, but when lives are at stake, they are all business.
Unfortunately, the shift boss Michael Ragosa (Freddy Rodriguez) is more interested in saving bucks than buying bandages, which brings out the rule-breaker in T C. It’s soon clear that not even his ex-girlfriend Jordan Alexander (Jill Flint), who’s now a doctor and Ragosa’s second in charge, can keep him in line.
A bit of NBC's heritage lives on, as well, in The Night Shift. Eriq La Salle, who starred as Dr Peter Benton in ER, is making his mark behind the scenes as a guest director.
“Eriq La Salle is great,” says Flint. “He’s the kind of guy who will pull you aside – and the first time he said this to me, I was like: ‘Excuse me? You want me to what?’ – and he’s like: ‘All right, Jill, here’s the deal. This scene right here: I want you to put some stank on it.’
“Which means in the real world: you have the dialogue and you’re respectful of the writers, but he’s like: ‘I want you to get dirty. I want you guys to talk over each other. I want you to really feel it.’”
The Night Shift premieres at 9pm tonight on OSN First HD
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