As seasoned veterans of the 8am phone call race to get a family appointment with the local GP surgery know all too well, a frustrating delay to see the doctor is simply a modern fact of life.
But the wait for the US medical drama The Pitt to come to the UK has been something else.
Word has been out since last year that this was the latest absolute must-watch offering from the gods of stateside television.
Somehow it was already onto the second season and five Emmys to the good – including for Outstanding Drama Series – before us Brits got a chance to view it at last, thanks to the launch of HBO Max here (also available for subscribers to Now).
So, the doctors will see us now, or at least we’ll see them, frenziedly busy in the A&E department they know as ‘The Pitt’ of an inner-city hospital in Pittsburgh (now do you geddit with the title?), Pennsylvania.
And what could be more reassuring than to have a nice Jewish boy turned good at the heart of the story?
That’s Noah Wyle – who in reality traces his family roots back to Russia – as Pitt top doc Michael ‘Robby’ Robinavitch, lightning fast and ever unfailing with his diagnosis of even the trickiest cases but not afraid to try out the Shema in extremis (but don’t get the wrong idea, very much otherwise a thorough agnostic you understand).
Picking up some years on from where he left off as the heartthrob surgery resident Dr John Carter in that pioneering medical drama juggernaut ER, Wyle as Robby now has the face of a soul weatherbeaten both inside and out.
This is a doctor with a conscience, troubled by the constant struggle between limitless needs of Joe Public and the carefully measured resources of the hospital beancounters and medical insurance.
Yet Robby is only the heart of the storm, and around him are – well, just where to start?
A score of characters are introduced in quick succession.
Each one, at least to start with, might as well have their dramatic function tattooed on their forehead. “over-confident newbie”; “hard-bitten and possibly suicidal veteran”; “wet behind the ears student who will learn”; “nurse who’s the real boss”; “soulless hospital finance chief”.
That said, it’s easy to underestimate the considerable writing craft that enables us to keep track of so many names and faces, even if few of them stretch to two dimensions.
So far, so familiar, although admittedly perfectly engrossing as the patient cases stack up at double-time, as does the attendant medical and human intrigue of each of the many storylines.
The distinguishing features are the sheer frenzied pace, unremittingly technical language that has the smack of authenticity (sometimes befuddling although eventually intelligible in context, in a way that fans of House will know well) and a grimly bleak picture of what happens when patient numbers far out-strip beds and staff.
Beneath that superficially persuasive veneer of verisimilitude lies a rich stew of what is in truth elevated soap opera, the mix familiar to viewers of ER or, for that matter, Casualty.
The USP to note is the series format: each of the 15 episodes of the first season is an hour from a single shift unfolding over the course of a day, very much in the mode of the Kiefer Sutherland secret agent series 24.
That makes for jam-packed and sometimes exhausting drama, and in truth realism be damned. (Otherwise where’s the hour in which everyone is busy as heck but only on the very dullest tasks?)
The Pitt doesn’t entirely live up to the overheated hype – after all those months’ build-up, what could? – but it works, poised somewhere between adequately nourishing entertainment and sometimes all-too-exhausting slice of hospital life.
Now that let that lovely Dr Robbie check you in and check it out.
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