Pulse’s mediocrity, The Pitt’s excellence and the renewed wave of medical dramas and comedies

“Did you watch a lot of Grey’s Anatomy growing up?” the chief resident asked of a medical student and intern, who enthusiastically replied, “Yeah”.

“OK. Try to unlearn that.”

It’s a curious exchange at the top of the second episode of Pulse, a new medical drama which dropped on Netflix today, because this new series owes a lot to Grey’s Anatomy, the grande dame of medical dramas which is still going after, checks notes, 21 seasons.

Hence, also, the comment about “growing up” because most of the characters on Pulse were probably still in primary school when Grey’s started.

It’s not just the scrubs, jargon and brightly lit and spacious rooms Pulse has in common with Grey’s. It’s also incredibly soapy, prioritising the dramatic interpersonal dynamics between its doctors and nurses.

The chief resident who asked the question is Danny Simms (Willa Fitzgerald), and she has been newly promoted to the position after the previous one, Xander Phillips (Colin Woodell) was stood down after a harassment complaint.

Danny is the one who filed it, although the audience, like their colleagues, are denied the details of what led to the trip to HR. The storyline runs concurrently with flashbacks that track from when Danny and Xander first met, clearly hot for each other, and left wondering what went so wrong.

If Pulse is going to satisfy, you have to really care about this plot point, which is hard to do when it’s so slowly doled out, and when, if we’re honest, you don’t care about either Danny or Xander.

The thing about TV doctors is they’re compelling when they’re overwhelmingly competent at their jobs, and Pulse is less concerned about that side of things.

Every flashback that takes them out of the hospital is a distraction and momentum killer of the other storyline that’s unfolding – a hurricane is battering Miami and the trauma centre is engulfed in dramas from patients rolling in, power stations going down and being cut off.

This far more interesting plot point lacks urgency and dynamism.

On top of that, the series uses a dramatic device where it mixes the sounds of a heartbeat as well as something resembling a deep sigh every time Danny has an emotion. It is wildly irritating and if this series gets a second season, let’s hope the producers do away with it.

Pulse wouldn’t have been so obvious in its mediocrity if it wasn’t part of a renewed wave of medical drama and comedies. On every streaming platform, there are characters wearing scrubs or white coats. Or in the case of the unhinged and genuinely terrible Doctor Odyssey (medicos on a cruise ship), starch-collared seafaring uniforms.

The genre had been a staple of the 1990s and early 2000s but had become less in vogue after the trend of dark, gritty, anti-hero-led prestige dramas took over American TV.

There had been breakouts such as The Good Doctor, New Amsterdam, The Resident and stalwarts such as Grey’s and Chicago Med, but right now, there is a convergence.

There’s Brilliant Minds with Zachary Quinto and the not-House Watson, a Sherlock Holmes story set in the modern world, both of them broadcast network shows that could be generously described as “mid”.

There’s the equally underwhelming workplace comedy St Denis Medical, the pretty good Berlin ER, and the upcoming drama about an amnesiac doctor, Doc. Scrubs is even in development on a reboot.

Something is definitely in the air (tank). Part of it is the genre makes an easy template for a procedural, which while it never went away is more alluring to produce in an era where there’s an industry contraction after years of runaway budgets and commissions of ambitious, movie star-studded projects.

Medical shows are cheaper to make, requiring fewer locations given most of the action happens in a fake hospital, and a recognisable format means you don’t have to spend millions per episode on big name talent. Audiences already have a shorthand so they don’t need a super-famous face.

None of this is to denigrate medical shows because one of the newbies on the block is also in contention for one of the best shows of 2025: The Pitt.

At first, it seemed like a cheeky ER remake/revival in all but name but this Noah Wyle-led and John Wells-produced drama is compulsive, masterfully written and beautifully performed.

If you’re comparing Pulse with The Pitt, they’re not even playing the same game.

The Pitt is a week-to-week release with each episode of its first season structured as one hour in a 15-hour shift. There are two episodes still to come but its 12th chapter is an incredibly gripping hour of TV.

The hospital in The Pitt is inundated with a mass casualty event after an active shooter opened fire at a nearby music festival. The victims keep rolling in and the staff switch to a different mode, trying to save as many people as possible.

The camera whizzes around from one trauma to another, but always taking enough time to sell the gravity of each moment. Most significantly, because this episode was scheduled 12 episodes into the season, the show has already established each of its regular characters so that you understand where they’re at as well as the patients.

The Pitt did this not by ramping up the soap opera between its characters but by revealing to the audience, through previous episodes, who they all are through how they work. That balance is the ultimate “show, don’t tell”.

We may be getting to the point of “oh no, not another medical show”, but always make time for the ones that are worth it. The Pitt is, Pulse is not.

Pulse is on Netflix, The Pitt is on Max and Binge*, Doctor Odyssey is on Disney+, Brilliant Minds is on Binge, Watson is on Paramount+, Berlin ER is on Apple TV+, St Denis Medical is on 7plus, Doc is on 7plus from April 22

*Available on Binge until May 9