Few hospital shows cast a longer shadow than ER. The NBC series ran for more than a decade, and Noah Wyle was one of its longest-running cast members. Now, Wyle is back in The Pitt, another hospital series that is coming to Max in January. The series is set in a hospital emergency room in Pittsburgh, Penn., and it takes place over the course of a single 15-hour shift, witch episode representing an hour of real time.
Max describes the new series as “a realistic examination of the challenges facing healthcare workers in today’s America as seen through the lens of the frontline heroes working in a modern-day hospital in Pittsburgh, Penn.”
As we see in the first trailer, the show offers a sense of just how chaotic the emergency room can be, and how much a doctor can deal with over the course of a single shift, from the mundane to the deadly. In addition to Wyle, the series also stars Supriya Ganesh, Tracey Ifeachor, Patrick Marron Ball,, Fiona Dourif, Taylor Dearden, Isa Briones, Gerran Howell, Shabana Azeez and Katherine LaNasa.
Although the series won’t start airing until January, it’s already embroiled in controversy because of a lawsuit the Michael Crichton estate filed against the series. The lawsuit alleges that The Pitt is an unauthorized reboot of ER, which Crichton created. Warner Bros. TV has fired back at the lawsuit, saying that “The Pitt is a complete different show from ER.”
They may share a star, but the real-time, 24-esque storytelling in The Pitt will certainly make it feel different than ER.
