Finished The Pitt? This new show is your next dose of hospital drama

Doc ★★★½

Since television began, doctors – along with cops – have been one of the perennial wells to which producers keep returning to drink from. No matter how much the entertainment landscape changes, no matter how many trends come and go, the medical drama has remained one of the immovable pillars that hold up the medium.

But after so many decades of hospital stories, if someone wants to bring something fresh to the field – and yes, we concede that’s a big “if” – they must choose a path. They can go hard at bloody, brutal and (literally) visceral realism, like current Big Thing The Pitt. Or they can take the more traditional route by finding a new hook to hang the drama on, a new way to make the medical drama be not really about medicine at all. That’s the path Doc has gone down: it’s about doctors and patients, sure, but personal turmoil is the bigger point.

Molly Parker stars as Dr Amy Larsen in a new series, Doc. Credit: Christos Kalohoridis/Fox/Sony Pictures Television

Doc is an adaptation of the Italian series Doc – Nelle Tue Mani (“In Your Hands”), which is itself inspired by the real-life story of Dr Pierdante Piccioni, a former ER head who lost all memory of the last 12 years of his life following a car accident. That true story is very much only a jumping-off point for Doc, in which we meet Dr Amy Larsen, chief of internal medicine as Westside Hospital, who suffers a traumatic brain injury in a crash, losing eight years rather than 12.

When she wakes up and is made aware of her condition, there’s a hell of a lot to process – and not just the fact she thinks Barack Obama is still the president. In the intervening years, Dr Larsen has divorced her husband (who also happens to be her boss), become estranged from her daughter, and started a relationship with a younger doctor. Larsen and her family also suffered an unimaginable tragedy in the years she can’t remember, a tragedy that set in motion all the rest and which indirectly led to her becoming the most hated person at the hospital.

In the last eight years Amy, who was a sweet and infectiously happy person, has actually become a real jerk. Like Dr House but without the witty one-liners, she abuses her subordinates, is rude and abrasive to patients, and generally dials the obnoxiousness up to 11. Now she finds herself recovering amid a group of people who loathe and resent her for reasons she simply can’t fathom.

The accident has had major effects on other lives, too, like the boyfriend whose relationship with Amy just went up in smoke, and the rival doctor (played by Scott Wolf, all grown up and admirably wormy) whose career Amy was about to ruin but who now has her old job.

Doc is burdened with many of the flaws of the average medical drama. Unrealistic dialogue and slow-motion shots set to overwrought ballads abound. Like most TV hospitals, Westside is a hotbed of cliche and there are times when it’s difficult to judge Dr Larsen too badly for treating her co-workers like dirt, given how annoying most of them are.

But Doc is redeemed, and lifted above the pack, by a couple of factors. First is the outstanding lead performance by Molly Parker (Deadwood, House of Cards). As Amy Larsen, Parker wrings every last drop of pain and fear out of her situation. A character that so easily could have been a dull mix of dewy eyes and convenient realisations is made real and relatable through Parker’s ability to transmit the inner maelstrom in a way we can relate to.

And not unconnected to this is the fact that, for all the conventional trappings, Doc tells a genuinely compelling story. The dreadful confusion of trying to make sense of a world that has moved on so dramatically since your last memory, of trying to rebuild a life while reliving tragedies and learning every day in 100 ways that you’re not the person you thought you were. It’s all a well-aimed shot to the heart that pushes us to consider: what if that was me?

Doc streams new episodes each Tuesday on 7plus.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.