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It feels rather quaint to be sitting around in Britain waiting for the novel cultural imports of America to reach our shores. In the days of streaming, the whole world watches along together. Not so with The Pitt, the Emmy Award-winning jewel in HBO’s crown that has been tantalisingly withheld until the streaming service became available in the UK this week.
If you haven’t heard of it yet, whatever you do, for the love of God do not google it. The second season is already reaching its final arc, and The Pitt experience is best enjoyed entirely spoiler-free. Just watch it, a single episode every week for 15 weeks. The simple yet perfect premise is that each episode follows roughly an hour in a 12-hour shift for the overworked and stressed-out doctors, nurses and support staff of an emergency department (that’s A&E to us Brits) at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.
Yes, there are 15 episodes and only 12 hours. As I said, go looking for plot information at your own peril. The Pitt has ushered in a new golden age of the sacred weekly episode drop and deserves not to be binged.
Every medical procedural show needs a twist, but this way there’s no need to raise the stakes with madcap medical mysteries (House) or workplace romances (Grey’s Anatomy). No one is secretly hooking up in the medical supplies closet (although there is a robust fanfiction community already established to cater to this desire, should you wish to indulge). Instead, the focus on the medical accuracy — nine out of ten doctors agree The Pitt is the most true-to-life depiction of everything that can go wrong in the human body on television — and the ensemble cast has created space for a thrilling and deeply moving portrait of people striving for dignity on the worst day of their lives.
Co-executive producer Noah Wyle stars as Dr Michael "Robby" Robinavitch, the attending doctor running the day shift at “The Pitt”, as the organised chaos of the windowless emergency department is nicknamed by its denizens. It’s the anniversary of his mentor’s death during peak Covid, and he’s trying in vain to keep a lid on that particular box of healthcare worker trauma.
Senior resident Dr Heather Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) is navigating morning sickness and being, frankly, sick of Robby’s gonzo approach to emergency medicine. Fellow senior resident Dr Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) is Robby’s golden boy in line for a fellowship, while Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) keeps the ship steady as the tough charge nurse with a heart of gold. Nurses, including Purlah (Amielynn Abellera) and Princess (Kristin Villanueva), keep the whole show on the road.
The Pitt is a teaching hospital, a neat ploy of the writers to have a logical reason for some characters to display extreme competency under pressure while narrating what the hell is happening to their students (and the audience watching at home), each of whom is also striving for career success while revealing snippets of personal backstory. Robby is endlessly ragging on third-year resident Dr Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) for taking too much time over her patients as the backlog builds up in ‘chairs’ (the waiting room) while second-year Dr Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif) is a single mother and older than most of the other trainees.
Joining the team for their first day on The Pitt are the ‘pittlings’: Dr Mel King (Taylor Dearden) as a sweet, smart and neurodivergent-coded second-year resident; Dr Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) an intern with a snarky attitude that belies her sensitive soul; fourth-year student Dr Dennis Whitaker, a farm boy from Nebraska who ends up covered in gross bodily fluids faster than he can change his scrubs; and Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez) as a girl genius that’s already a third-year before she’s of legal drinking age. Together, they must serve the residents of Pittsburgh and their many maladies, wading through bureaucracy and staff shortages to save lives. Not every patient lives, and each death will break you as well as them.
You’ll laugh, you’ll squeal (some of the procedures are wonderfully gory, but that’s not to everyone’s taste), you’ll cry. You’ll also be incredibly grateful for the NHS, which may also be crumbling like the American healthcare system, but is at least free at the point of service. It’s written and directed with the kind of aplomb that prestige television requires and doesn’t dumb down for a distracted audience — scroll on your phone for one second, and you’ll miss crucial information. It honours healthcare workers and scared patients alike and doesn’t pull punches with political plotlines. A tonic for the soul in dark times.
The Pitt season one is streaming now on HBO Max
