I came here after seeing Line of Duty (which I rate 10/10) from the same creator. I knew it was a medical show and having seen House and others, I knew what I was getting into.
The problem with this show is the same problem with many medical shows. They're procedurals. Every week you get a new patient who is treated and released by the end of the episode. It's a formulaic format, even if they come up with new and original injuries every week.
Because the patients are disposable characters and story lines, the show needs continuity, so it finds it in office romances, gossip and office politics. This creates a reversed situation from serials. Serials have a main story arc that runs throughout the season and the little gossip, romances and love interests are the side dish.
For example, you tune in to Line of Duty (same creator: Mercurio and same star, Lennie James) and you're curious as to what the next step is for the Gates investigation. You're curious about the professional work, not the gossip.
Here it's the opposite. Since you can't tell who the next patient is, you're only left with gossip and office romances that have continuity. There is some office politics and bureaucratic power plays, but they're so minor that no one could care.
There's not enough gossip to keep it interesting for people that like Grey's Anatomy and there's not enough continuity for everyone else to tune in. I myself don't care for the office romances and politics, and since patients only last an episode, there's no reason to care about them either.
There's no way around this in a medical show. House MD goes around this and makes it about ethics and hard choices. But here the patients are slabs of meat and can't say or do anything.
People simply prefer shows with more continuity now. That's why In Treatment worked because it's continuous, same patients, same cases. A conveyor belt of patients gets boring quickly.
That's what happened to this show, even though everything else was very, very good.
The problem with this show is the same problem with many medical shows. They're procedurals. Every week you get a new patient who is treated and released by the end of the episode. It's a formulaic format, even if they come up with new and original injuries every week.
Because the patients are disposable characters and story lines, the show needs continuity, so it finds it in office romances, gossip and office politics. This creates a reversed situation from serials. Serials have a main story arc that runs throughout the season and the little gossip, romances and love interests are the side dish.
For example, you tune in to Line of Duty (same creator: Mercurio and same star, Lennie James) and you're curious as to what the next step is for the Gates investigation. You're curious about the professional work, not the gossip.
Here it's the opposite. Since you can't tell who the next patient is, you're only left with gossip and office romances that have continuity. There is some office politics and bureaucratic power plays, but they're so minor that no one could care.
There's not enough gossip to keep it interesting for people that like Grey's Anatomy and there's not enough continuity for everyone else to tune in. I myself don't care for the office romances and politics, and since patients only last an episode, there's no reason to care about them either.
There's no way around this in a medical show. House MD goes around this and makes it about ethics and hard choices. But here the patients are slabs of meat and can't say or do anything.
People simply prefer shows with more continuity now. That's why In Treatment worked because it's continuous, same patients, same cases. A conveyor belt of patients gets boring quickly.
That's what happened to this show, even though everything else was very, very good.