Other than cop/crime thrillers and family sitcoms, the most favorite theme of any channel producing drama series, would be medical field. There are several super hit series on this field and it continues to provide never ending stream of premises and situations for script writers to explore. Having binge watched a couple of them, my favorite of the lot would be House M.D, for its unique and probably the first ever medical series, to feature diagnosis of a disease like a crime thriller. The entire setup resembled a sherlockian mystery and it was clarified by David Shore, the creator as well, of his love for that fictional detective. Even the names of the characters carried strong relativity with House for Holmes, James for John, the erratic, eccentric, brilliant, arrogant but golden hearted nature of House and so on. Grey’s Anatomy was another such series based on doctors and hospital. But the similarity ends right there, with this one focusing more on human emotions, love and probably a lot more than the 7 sins identified. It had a rainbow casting with coverage on all gender types and races. The medical thrill variety was a bit watered down on the episodes and it is one of the longest running drama series, still ongoing I guess. Beyond a limit, it became unrecognizable from our mamiar marumagal tamil soap and I’ve stopped watching it. I haven't seen Scrubs yet. The latest fad of mine being the Good doctor, created by the same guy who gave House M.D.
The fascination behind medical field as a recurring theme for these drama being, the rich source of emotions and human interest stories involved, with each difficult disease and ailment providing the thrill factor. With the advancement in medical field, that progresses to conquer the disease realm, one cure at a time and with each new species being added to the menu resulting in more and more complex and unknown before disease symptoms emerging, this field is a mother lode of stories. The main difference between the Good doctor and the other series like House being, it shows the advancement in technologies as real as possible. Treatments involving virtual reality, scope related visuals, MRI related visuals, technical terms being major portion of the dialogues and the ease with which they are embedded into regular conversations, give a credibility to the scene portrayed like never before. Many a time, you forget that this is a scripted scene and the characters are repeating the dialogues pre-written and not original doctors. Such is the level of confidence with which the scenes are developed and the correctness to the detail is near perfect. On the chat rooms and discussion forums, the hot topic of debate would often be around any glaring miss from real time setup or treatment, as if the hospital and doctors are real time physicians. I wish there are some such series made for our setup as well, throwing some light behind the life and struggles of doctors. Considering the political power keg of a situation often around our medical industry, it is an area that has potential to churn several blockbuster OTT content.
Comments
For most people a visit or stay in a hospital would be viewed with horror. Why on earth should we willing subject ourselves to watching something so scray on TV. They of course do not show the gory side of hospital stays - all they have to do is show one intubation and nobody will ever watch anything medical for the rest of their lives.
Yes, I understand that there is human drama. But surely there are enough other fields for all that drama to be shown.