We may all love The Pitt, but don’t forget it was ER that led the way
SOURCE:Sydney Morning Herald|BY:Debi Enker
TV has changed radically in past decades but thankfully, good drama, especially of the medical kind, never goes out of style.
The Pitt was a standout and, to some, a surprise success at the 2025 Emmy Awards. It won in four categories, including outstanding drama series and best lead actor in a drama series for Noah Wyle, triumphing against favoured contenders including Severance and The White Lotus.
As the acclaimed and addictive HBO Max hospital drama created by R. Scott Gemmill is set to return for a second season on January 8, it seems fitting to acknowledge, and celebrate, the vision that helped shape it.
Set in a Pittsburgh trauma centre, The Pitt clearly shares some of its DNA with ER (ABC iview, HBO Max), the award-winning and widely admired hospital series that was set in the emergency ward of a perpetually under-the-pump Chicago hospital. Both Gemmill and Pitt executive producer John Wells worked on ER, as did Wyle, who played Dr John Carter for 11 seasons. He is now also a writer and executive producer on The Pitt.
The stars of ER (from left) Noah Wyle, Sherry Stringfield, Anthony Edwards, George Clooney and Eric La Salle.
Exactly how much of ER‘s DNA is discernible in the recent series is a question that’s now the subject of legal action brought by the estate of ER’s creator, Harvard-educated doctor and best-selling author Michael Crichton, who died in 2008. The lawsuit claims The Pitt is an unauthorised reboot.
The generic connections between the series are evident. That could be a case of evolution, in the same way the innovations of Hill Street Blues influenced the police series that followed it, or that LA Law influenced legal dramas.
But whatever the outcome of the legal case, _ER’_s place in TV’s pantheon deserves recognition. Over 15 seasons (1994 to 2009) and 331 episodes, it set a benchmark for television drama in general and medical series in particular. Nominated for outstanding drama Emmys for six consecutive years following its debut, it won the award for its second season, eventually receiving an astonishing 124 Emmy nominations overall.
The series was born after Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television picked up a pilot script by Crichton that had been rejected elsewhere. It burst forth with a bracing rush of energy and inventiveness, bringing breathtaking pace and an unflinching eye to the practice of medicine in a pressured urban public hospital.
Noah Wyle stars as Dr Michael Robinavitch in medical drama The Pitt.
There was an unrelenting flood of people requiring attention, filling the crowded waiting area or crashing through the swinging doors on gurneys propelled by paramedics calling out urgent assessments of patients, who were frequently bleeding, screaming, crying, convulsing or unconscious.
Mobile cameras captured the activity, their movement heightening the momentum, and dialogue often over-lapped, accentuating the impression of barely controlled chaos. Nothing about this environment was orderly or calm: and the constant state of red alert was immersive.
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Doctors and nurses raced to the trauma rooms, their specialist language of abbreviations and acronyms delivered at rapid-fire pace: orders for CBCs, tox screens, BPs, amps of Epi, ccs of saline and units of lidocaine, as well as the calls to “Clear!” as the heart-starting paddles of defibrillators were applied. And everything needed to be done “stat!“. ER was fast and furious. An inner-city hospital had never been portrayed this way: at times, it looked more like a war zone.
In addition to the pace and visual style, ER was structurally solid, featuring a beautifully calibrated and multiracial ensemble, as well as a procession of impactful guest stars. The early seasons focused largely on the characters’ working lives and the storylines were bold, tackling issues such as HIV, domestic violence, suicide and drug and alcohol addiction.
ER rightfully earned a large and devoted following, in its early years averaging more than 30 million viewers a week. The audacious live-to-air episode that opened the fourth season out-rated the milestone ratings-magnet of Dallas’ “Who Shot JR?” episode. And just to boost the degree of difficulty, ER did it twice, initially for the viewers on America’s East Coast and again two hours later for the west.
Over the years, the show proved fertile ground for actors, some of whom got their big breaks there. Most famously, there’s George Clooney, a jobbing actor previously consigned to bit parts and B-movies who found a perfect fit with the role of philandering paediatrician Doug Ross, a handsome charmer who’s great with kids and dangerous with women.
George Clooney as Dr Doug Ross on ER.
But there were also numerous notables in regular and returning roles. Among them were Maura Tierney, Linda Cardellini and Gloria Reuben in the core cast, William H. Macy and Stanley Tucci in recurring roles, and guest stars including Ray Liotta (who won an Emmy), Sally Field, Cynthia Nixon, Alan Alda, Don Cheadle and Bob Newhart.
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Its feature-length pilot opened with Anthony Edwards as Dr Mark Greene, a weary, battle-hardened veteran in an over-stretched and under-resourced public institution. He was the heart and soul of the place, a rock amid the swirl of activity. Today, he seems to be a model for the steady guiding force that is Wyle’s Dr Michael “Robby” Robinavitch in The Pitt and for numerous other leads in hospital series.
Back then, Wyle was the fresh-faced, keen and green John Carter, an intern assigned to Eriq La Salle’s impatient, arrogant and skilled surgical resident, Peter Benton. Also on-call in the pilot were Julianna Margulies as proficient head nurse Carol Hathaway and Sherry Stringfield as capable and compassionate Dr Susan Lewis.
A casualty of Ross’ variable affections, Hathaway attempted suicide in the opener and was supposed to die. But the producers found the chemistry between Margulies and Clooney to be so potent they decided – against Crichton’s wishes – to save her. It’s a testament to the joy and flexibility that can come with an ongoing series, and to producers who are alert to possibilities.
In the years between ER’s conclusion and The Pitt’s launch, TV has changed radically with the arrival of streaming services. And, in a way, The Pitt’s Emmys could be seen as a victory for a kind of TV that’s sometimes seen as old-fashioned. Episodes dropped weekly, not in one binge-able bundle. The first season has 15 episodes, rather than the now-common six or eight. And at a time when so many series resist easy categorisation, it sits squarely in one of TV’s staple genres.
But, as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Innovative series will always capture attention and generate excitement. But creative vision, intelligent writing, technical skill, clever casting and absorbing hospital dramas never go out of fashion.
