Boxing Clever: The Pitt
Every week, Michael Telfer – aka Mike TV – recommends a box set to crack open. This week’s choice is a gritty medical drama that squeamish viewers may need to watch through their fingers.
Medical procedural drama The Pitt finally arrived on British screens last month. Finally, because the hit HBO show has been out in America for over a year, and in that time has hoovered up enough awards to fill even the most generous of colostomy bags.
The UK release was held back to coincide with the launch of the HBO Max streaming platform in Britain, as the jewel in the crown… the pièce de résistance… the big shiny show that would convince people to volunteer their direct debit details.
The good news for us is that when it did finally land all 15 episodes were immediately available. Oh, and that it is absolutely, unequivocally brilliant.
The Pitt is set in the emergency room at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, where the doctors and nurses attempt to navigate an ever-growing queue of patients, staff shortages, underfunding, and in many cases the overflow from their own lives.
Each episode, set in real time, covers approximately one hour of the work shift, with the full season covering one extended, traumatic shift.
Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch is the lead character, and the first episode starts with him clocking in at the ER, nicknamed “the Pitt”, along with four student doctors who have just joined the team.
Robby is brilliantly played by Noah Wyle, who many will remember from ER where he played John Carter in the first eleven series. Wyle is the heartbeat of the show and also an Executive Producer.
The real time aspect of the show has been well documented, but for me it isn’t what makes the show compelling, or elevates it from the rest.
On several occasions we are told that the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center is a teaching hospital. This essentially means that every time some poor sod on a gurney lands in the Pitt they present a learning opportunity for the many student doctors in the ER, and by extension for the viewer.
As bodily fluids squirt from writhing patients a senior doctor will ask a fresh-faced protégé to suggest diagnoses and treatment options, and in most cases then invite them to proceed with the remedy that involves the most incisions.
It also presents us with a posse of ambitious and bright-eyed young trainees who are finding their way around the Pitt at the same time we are. It’s a baptism of fire for all of us.
Mel King (Taylor Dearden) is neurodivergent and brilliant, Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) is painfully ambitious and scalpel happy, Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez) is desperate that nobody finds out she’s a nepo-doctor, and Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell) is an unfortunate excretion magnet.
The dramas come thick and fast as the team battle to free up treatment rooms and reduce the overcrowding in the waiting room. It’s easier said than done.
The show brilliantly mixes humour with suspense and drama, and over the course of the first season each episode manages to somehow improve on the previous one. For a show as hyped as The Pitt, it’s a hell of a feat.
If you rattle through the first season faster than Dr Whitaker goes through clean scrubs, there’s even more good news. Season 2 has already started (although you will have to slow down and wait for a new episode to drop every Friday) and Season 3 has already been commissioned.
Is The Pitt fantastic? Yes. Is it good enough to justify signing up to another streaming service? You bet your life it is.