Pop culture's best medical dramas

To many, ER is still the quintessential medical drama. It was a massive hit, perhaps the biggest drama of any kind on television. It also helped mint a few new stars, including a longtime TV actor who had trouble finding a breakthrough role. We think his name was George Clooney or something like that.

At the time, St. Elsewhere was more of a critical darling than anything else. It would win Emmys, even if it didn’t win many ratings battles. These days, St. Elsewhere is perhaps best remembered for the massive twist of the series finale. It turns out, the entire series was a dream inspired by a snow globe?

With all due respect to Chicago Med, this is the Chicago-centered medical drama we think of first. It was created by David E. Kelley and had Mandy Patinkin as a star for at least a couple of seasons. Three different actors won Emmys throughout the series.

Hey, knock soap operas if you want. General Hospital has been a staple for generations. No, really. General Hospital debuted on television way back in 1963 and is still going. It gave us Luke, Laura, and over 15,000 episodes over the years. Maybe the storytelling and acting aren’t always perfect, but the lasting legacy of General Hospital should be acknowledged.

The Knick is not for the squeamish. The Clive Owen show directed by Steven Soderbergh is set in a hospital in New York in 1900. Surgery at the time was, shall we say, not as advanced as it is now, but people’s bodies still had the same amount of blood in them. Soderbergh pulls no punches.

Kind of a primetime soap, Grey’s Anatomy is as interested in torrid romances as medical drama. Although, there is plenty of medical drama. The show likes to get pretty out there at times with the big events that happen, and at its heart, this is a medical show. With two characters early on that had dumb nicknames. While most of the original cast is gone, including Meredith Grey, the show continues.

When we were talking about The Knick, we didn’t mention that Owen’s character is also an opium addict. We say that because it leads us nicely to Nurse Jackie. Edie Falco plays a nurse who works in a hospital handling emergency cases. She pops a lot of pills along the way. Her drug use is as much a focal point of the show as the medical emergencies, and it shows how the two are intertwined in a way.

Gregory House is, basically, Sherlock Holmes but in the medical world. Hugh Laurie gained fame in the United States as Dr. House, a curmudgeon with no bedside manner. In the end, of course, he’s always right about his diagnosis. Laurie was so good that for years people would be floored when they saw him in interviews, being both charming and British.

Northern Exposure is more of a dramedy, but it won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, so it counts here. Creator by the guys who also created St. Elsewhere, this show is a little lighter. Rob Morrow stars as Joel Fleischman, who graduates from medical school and then ends up in Anchorage, Alaska working as a physician. It’s your classic fish-out-of-water story.

This under-the-radar CBS medical drama aired for three seasons in the 2010s. Code Black was based on a documentary about a busy, understaffed emergency room in Los Angeles. While it didn’t get the cultural cache of some of these other medical dramas, that doesn’t speak to its quality.

The USA network was known for its light dramas for a few years. Think Suits, White Collar, and Royal Pains. This sunny-skies dramedy focused on a doctor in the Hamptons who ends up begrudgingly working as a house-call doctor for rich people. It ran for over 100 episodes and perfectly fit in with USA’s era’s lineup.

This show starring Jane Seymour is another old-school medical drama but decidedly less bleak than The Knick. Michaela Quinn is a doctor from Boston who heads to the Old West to practice medicine and ride a horse. Mostly, we remember her riding a horse.

Robert Young stars as Welby, a kindly older doctor seemingly friends with all his patients. He is juxtaposed within the show with Dr. Steve Kiley, a serious doctor played by James Brolin. Despite Welby’s gentle disposition, Marcus Welby could be quite a serious show. It also won an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series.

Let’s head across the pond. The success of Doc Martin is frankly surprising. Martin Clunes played Dr. Martin Bamford in the small indie comedy Saving Grace. He was a tertiary character. However, he ended up being the focus of two made-for-TV prequel movies. This gave birth to Doc Martin, which is about a no-nonsense doctor with no bedside manner who heads to a small village where he feels out of place. It was popular enough to yield 70 episodes, a significant number for a British show.

Based on Oliver Sacks’ memoir, Awakenings is a fictionalized version of his story. Robin Williams stars as Sacks’ analog, and Robert De Niro has a big role as a man removed from a catatonic state after decades. This is obviously medically huge, but it also marks a big change for De Niro’s character.

Contagion  recently got a morbid increase in popularity, but the movie is certainly strong. Steven Soderbergh directs this medical thriller about, well, a pandemic spreading. It has quite the cast. Gwyneth Paltrow got a lot of attention at the time, even if some of that was (spoiler) people wanting to watch her die on screen.

The name may be generic, but the film isn’t. This is something of a satire set in a hospital. George C. Scott, fresh off an Oscar win for Patton stars. Also, it was written by Pȧddy Chayefsky. He won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay, his second of three wins in that category. A few years later, he’d win his final Oscar for his magnum opus Network.

With a different cast, John Q would admittedly probably only be a decent medical drama at best. However, at the center of the movie is Denzel Washington. It's about a man who takes a hospital hostage to get his son a heart transplant. Washington, one of the greatest living actors, makes the most of material that is maybe a little heavy-handed at times.

Co-written by Aaron Sorkin, Malice has some speechifying, naturally. Alec Baldwin has one speech in this movie that has become pretty iconic in the Sorkin pantheon. Perhaps the entire movie isn’t up to that level, but this one part of Malice has kept it in the medical drama Hall of Fame.

Paramedics are often forgotten in the medical drama field. Martin Scorsese didn’t make that mistake. Bringing Out the Dead focuses on Frank Pierce, a paramedic who works the graveyard shift in an ambulance. Needless to say, it’s burning him out. Nicolas Cage can convey that burnout quite well.

A mental hospital is still a hospital. Granted, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is less about the medical side of things as it is a counterculture story about a man who foments something of an uprising after he gets himself committed so he can avoid a jail sentence. This is one of the quintessential ‘70s films — one of only three films to win the “Big Five” Oscar categories: Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay.