There are few better settings for instant drama than hospitals. Every day is a matter of life and death, and emotions are running high for patients, relatives, doctors, and nurses alike. It’s the perfect place for office romance as well, when medical staff is together for long hours and bonding through intense situations. It can also make for great comedy, given the various embarrassing reasons people might turn up at an emergency room in the middle of the night.
We’re going a little outside the mainstream to bring you hospital shows from further afield (how many times can one watch all ofGrey’s Anatomy, anyway? Don’t answer that.), with a list of the best dramas, comedies, and romances taking place inside hospitals.
11The Kingdom
Drama, comedy, romance, Lars von Trier’s epic miniseries has it all, and you may add supernatural horror as the icing on the cake. With three seasons airing in 1994, 1997, and 2022, there were four, four, and five episodes, respectively, all filmed within the confines or on the grounds of Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet. We know from the intro that the hospital is haunted, and we learn that the evil centers around the neurosurgery ward.
It’s hard to summarizeThe Kingdom, but among its myriad plot lines it includes a doctor who transplants a cancerous tumor into himself for the sake of research, a sweet old lady, possibly psychic, who holds séances with the patients and is determined to find out the hospital’s secrets, a nymphomaniac who works in the sleep study unit, an underground group of Swedish staff who are united in their loathing of the Danish, a pair of dishwashers with Down’s Syndrome who function as a Greek chorus, and a baby played by Udo Kier. It’s funny, it’s tragic, it’s filmed in sepia tones, and von Trier himself gives a little recap at the end of every episode.
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10Green Wing
Green Wingis a kooky, quirky British comedythat ran from 2004 to 2007, and had the distinction of being set in a hospital, but very rarely featuring any patients. Tamsin Grieg is the hapless Dr. Caroline Todd, caught in a love triangle with sardonic Dr. “Mac” Macartney (Julian Rhind-Tutt) and suave Swiss anesthesiologist Guy Secretan (Stephen Mangan).
You’ll recognize some other British comedy greats, including Olivia Colman as a constantly late and harried secretary and mother of four boys, Michelle Gomez as a one-of-a-kind Scottish HR administrator, Mark Heap as an impossibly uptight radiologist, and Paterson Joseph as the sexiest IT guy on staff. It’s goofy and surreal, and none of the doctors have particularly impressive morals. Incredibly enjoyable.
9St. Elsewhere
Running from 1982-1988,St. Elsewhereset the standard for the kind of gritty medical show we are used to today. It was set in a crumbling Boston teaching hospital called St. Eligius that, despite its lack of high-tech resources, equipped interns with the tools to move out confidently into the wider medical world. Like the shows it directly influenced (E.R.,Chicago Hope), it featured a large ensemble cast (including Alfre Woodard, Denzel Washington, and Ed Begley Jr.) and boasted guest stars who went on to greatness (notably Tim Robbins).
The show tackled the at-the-time hot-button issues of AIDS and drug addiction with sensitivity, compassion, and occasional levity. The show was also known for its amusing crossovers, such as when Carla fromCheers(Rhea Perlman) gave birth at St. Eligius and was distinctly unhappy with the experience.
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Set (likeSt. Elsewhere) at a teaching hospital,Scrubsexplored much lighter territory, focusing on comedy (although still with a healthy dose of the dramatic). Zach Braff’s J.D. is the narrator, and we see the show through the lens of his thoughts and daydreams, starting from his time as an intern at Sacred Heart Hospital.
Along with his fellow staff (played by Sarah Chalke, Donald Faison, Ken Jenkins, John C. McGinley, and Judy Reyes), J.D. navigates his way through the hospital ranks, learning lessons about medicine but also friendship and romantic relationships. The first eight seasons were critically acclaimed, with a disastrous ninth season lacking the main cast, and thus the chemistry that made the show work so well.
7Childrens Hospital
Rob Corddry created and starred in this black comedy that’s a takeoff of those hour-long medical dramas we all love so well. The show ran on Adult Swim after premiering as a web series. The hospital was for children, but also named for a Dr. Childrens, which explains what looks like a grammatical error. Corddry is Dr. Blake Downs, whose frightening custom of dressing up in full clown regalia is less Patch Adams and moreJohn Wayne Gacy.
Corddry stocked the show with fellow comedians like Lake Bell (Dr. “Cat” Black, who has an affair with a prematurely aged six year old (Nick Kroll)), Megan Mullally (the hot yet disabled chief of staff), and Henry Winkler (an administrator with a butterfly obsession). It’s dark, irreverent, absurd, and the kind of show that the midnight time slot was created for.
6The Knick
Two seasons ofThe Knickhave aired so far, with a third reportedly in development, directed by Steven Soderburgh and starringClive Owenand Andre Holland as doctors at the Knickerbocker Hospital in 1900, a crucial era for medicine when much was still misunderstood, and high fatality rates were expected for just about everything.
Owen’s Dr. Thackeray is an innovative surgeon but also an opium addict; Holland’s Dr. Edwards struggles daily with racism from staff and patients while maintaining a secret clinic to care for African-Americans who aren’t accepted as patients.The Knickcaptures a fascinating time in the medical field, when hand-washing was still a relatively new theory, X-rays were still largely science fiction, and patients never knew if they would recover from surgery.
It’s one of the most influential television shows of all time, and it began its time as a spinoff from Robert Altman’s 1970 movie of the same title. Running from 1972 to 1983, the sitcom was set at a mobile surgical hospital in South Korea during the Korean War, and starred Alan Alda, Loretta Swit, Gary Burghoff, Jamie Farr, and others.
It was the first of its kind in so many ways, not least of all being a show about a very recent war being broadcast concurrently with the Vietnam War (reminiscent of howVeepwas tackling fictional plot lines that happened to be suspiciously similar to what was going on in real time). The show began as a comedy with dramatic moments, gradually becoming a drama with comedic moments over the years, becoming more political and disapproving of the US involvement in the Cold War. The series finale remains the most-watched TV series finale ever.
One of the few shows to have its own specialty, Ryan Murphy’sNip/Tuckdelved into the sometimes glamorous, sometimes seedy world of plastic surgery. Dylan Walsh and Julian McMahon played Drs. McNamara and Troy, and episodes examined their personal lives along with their interactions with patients, often with graphic surgery scenes.
It manages to combine an elegant mishmash of genres, from drama and black comedy to thriller and satire, and you’ll recognize a ton of famous faces among the recurring cast, including Vanessa Redgrave, Portia de Rossi, Peter Dinklage, Rose McGowan, and Bradley Cooper.
You just can’t leave outER, the most epic and influential of TV medical dramas. In the days before streaming, it kept the nation tuning in on Thursday nights for 15 seasons. Created by novelist/physician Michael Crichton, and was set in a fictionalized version of Chicago’s Cook County Hospital. It was equal parts medical emergency, with critical cases rushing in the door every minute, and human drama, with viewers deeply invested in the lives and times of the medical staff, their (many) relationships, and dealings with patients.
It’s a show that launched numerous careers, including that of George Clooney, Noah Wyle, and Julianna Marguiles. The combination of interesting medical catastrophes and relationship melodrama was perfect, and there hasn’t been another show like it that got that balance quite so right.
2Getting On
The geriatric ward of an NHS Hospital in England is perhapsnot the most obvious settingfor a sitcom, but for this one, running from 2009 to 2012, it was ideal. Comedian Jo Brand (who was once a nurse herself) leads the cast as Jo Wilde, who must wrangle daily with the often grim realities of the NHS, with understaffing and often ridiculous bureaucracy, while maintaining compassion for a group of patients that aren’t always exactly grateful.
It’s the sort of uncomfortable humor that Brits do best, with seasons one and two directed by the great Peter Capaldi. A U.S. version of the show aired on HBO from 2013 to 2015, starring Laurie Metcalf and Niecy Nash (in the Jo Brand role).
