The US drama that's had the best debut season in years
With a huge number of new TV shows being released each week, it can feel like a waste of time committing to something that isn't very good.
Every now and then, one comes along that has such a striking opening episode that there is no doubt you'll be watching until the big finale – but others take their time, inching its way into the heart of viewers with every new episode.
The Pitt is one such show. The medical drama was released on Max to positive reviews in January – but nobody could have quite predicted just how good it would get.
As it stands, The Pitt is going to end its first season as one of the greatest new shows to have premiered in a long while.
What's more is that the show is generating word-of-mouth excitement, meaning the series has been commissioned for a second season – and deserved awards attention for Noah Wyle, who has returned to the medical genre for the first time since ER.
Instead of Dr John Carter, Wyle plays Dr Robbie Robinovitch, who leads ER workers in the under-funded Pittsburgh hospital through a 15-hour shift that gets increasingly worse.
Each episode spans an hour of the shift.
The worse things get for the characters, the better they get for viewers – The Pitt is a series that gets increasingly better with every new outing, building upon the strong characterisation deftly doled out in earlier instalments that pay off in big ways when the unbearably tense final few hours roll around.
Joining Wyle in the cast are Tracy Ifeachor, Patrick Ball, Katherine LaNasa and Supriya Ganesh, who play his able team of doctors.
Meanwhile, the stars playing the medical students getting caught up in the drama include Isa Briones, Shabana Azeez, Ludwig actor Gerran Howell and Taylor Dearden, who is the daughter of Bryan Cranston.
The Pitt made headlines before it started when the estate of ER creator Michael Crichton sued Warner Bros Television, accusing the series of being an unauthorised reboot of the hit emergency room drama.
Crichton's estate, led by his widow Sherri, say they were in discussions with the studio about rebooting ER but failed to reach an agreement.
They have accused executive producer John Wells of a 'personal betrayal,' arguing in the lawsuit that he and star Noah Wyle, who played Dr John Carter in ER, dreamed up The Pitt after the Crichton estate blocked plans to bring back the original show.
The lawsuit states: ' The Pitt is ER. It's not like ER. It's not kind of ER. It's not sort of ER. It is ER with the exact same executive producer, writer, star, production companies, studio and network as the planned ER reboot.'
However, the show's creators, producers and writing team, including Wyle, Wells and R Scott Gemmil have denied such claims, stating: 'The two shows do not share the same name, characters, universe, plot, iconography, or IP. As any viewer can see, the only similarities are that they share an actor (playing different characters) and are medical dramas that include common tropes of that genre.'
A UK release date for The Pitt is yet to be announced. It is not to be confused with Pulse, a new medical show starting on Netflix this month.
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