What to watch on TV this week

Summer is done. Stay inside this weekend and check out these television selections – including a medical drama which does the simple things really, really well.

The Pitt, starring ER alum Noah Wyle, is far and away the best TV show of the year to date.

Summer is done. Stay inside this weekend and check out these television selections – including a medical drama which does the simple things really, really well.

Summer is done. Stay inside this weekend and check out these television selections – including a medical drama which does the simple things really, really well.

The Pitt

Binge

This medical drama is, for this writer’s money, simply the best piece of television of the year so far. Disregard anyone who says its old-school weekly drama roots are to its detriment: this is the old format working at the top of its game. Created by the team behind ER and starring ER player Noah Wyle as an emergency doctor barely hanging on as his day goes from bad to worse, The Pitt knows what it is and gets it mostly very right. Each episode covers one hour of a shift in a Pittsburgh hospital’s emergency room. Coming to the end of its first season, the show manages to balance intense — and often very graphic — medical cases, excellent characters and some not-so-subtle commentary about the challenges faced by corporatised medicine with grace and heart. In my household it is appointment viewing and, maybe contradictory to my praise of its network-TV roots, is perfect for a binge. If you haven’t started, I’m jealous you get to experience it for the first time.

Daredevil: Born Again

Disney+

Moving from the shift from hell to Hell’s Kitchen, long-in-the-tooth Marvel’s long-in-the-works revival of the Daredevil series debuted its nine-episode first season this month, with three episodes available at the time of writing. Many seem already to have forgotten the bloody, bone-crunching pleasure of the three-season street-level Netflix series which ran from 2015-18, and so has Marvel. Despite still-crackling chemistry between returning stars Charlie Cox (as our blind lawyer/vigilante) and a less-hulking Vincent D’Onofrio (as his arch-enemy Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin), Marvel insists on making its superheroes look B-grade when called to action. That said, the bones of the show, while not strong enough to survive a blow from a Daredevil baton, are not entirely weak. There is a lot of goodwill for these characters. Deborah Ann Woll’s Karen Page and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher remain enthralling to watch, along with our stars. Says one character in the first episode: “Not nostalgia. Reverence for the past, but hope for the future … too much?” We’ll see.

Good American Family

Disney+

Former Karen Page actor (in the much-derided 2003 Ben Affleck-starring Daredevil movie) Ellen Pompeo finally left Grey’s Anatomy, so her first non-Meredith Grey role in 20 years would always be one of note. Cue eight-episode thriller Good American Family, where Pompeo and Mark Duplass star as parents who adopt a young child with dwarfism, before starting to question if their new child is who she seems. The show, based on the true story of Ukrainian orphan Natalia Grace, will debut with a two-episode premiere on March 19. The limited series is created by co-showrunner Katie Robbins, who created the Rashida Jones sci-fi vehicle Sunny, whichonly survived one season on Apple TV+. Pompeo, who is still on Grey’s Anatomy but not as a full-time cast member, told The Hollywood Reporter she “wanted to do something that was completely different from what I’ve been doing for a long time” with Good American Family. Did she mean a completely different style of show, or just that this one won’t run for 20-odd years?

Rogue Heroes

SBS on Demand

Titled SAS: Rogue Heroes in the UK, where it was created by Peaky Blinders-helmsman Steven Knight, this show about the creation of the Special Air Service during World War II can only be described thus: hell-yeah. The six-episode second season of Rogue Heroes hit Aussie streaming earlier this year after more than two years away. Sex Education star Connor Swindells was so effortlessly charming as our James Bond-coded first-season lead I felt sure he was in-line for 007, but the second season (in keeping true to historical accuracy), has sidelined Swindells’ David Stirling and promoted Jack O’Connell as Paddy Mayne to the forefront. If Jeff Bezos and Amazon would like their newest Bond to present as an often-screaming maniac, look no further than O’Connell, who is brilliant in the part. As far as TV shows which recreate missions deep behind enemy lines, Rogue Heroes slots in right behind Band of Brothers.