Doctor New
Prepare for admittance to The Second Best Hospital In The Galaxy with series creator Cirocco Dunlap
WHAT’S BEEN MISSING FROM THE genre landscape? How about a horny, female-centric, adult animated series featuring hardcore SF storylines and Grey’s Anatomy-esque personal dramas, with a surreal aesthetic that’s somewhere between Scavengers Reign and The Fifth Element? If that sounds like your kind of weird, get ready to check into Prime Video’s The Second Best Hospital In The Galaxy.
Created by writer Cirocco Dunlap (Russian Doll), The Second Best Hospital In The Galaxy is essentially a mash-up of the real-life topics and influential shows rattling around inside her noggin. “I love sci-fi and anything with weird genre stuff,” Dunlap tells Red Alert. “And I love comedy and animation. I thought this seems like a really fun place to put a whole lot of ideas that are pretty disparate into a world where they can all live.”
Originally pitching it in 2019, Dunlap developed an animated comedy, set in 14002, at an intergalactic hospital where renowned surgeons Dr Sleech (Stephanie Hsu) and Dr Klak (Keke Palmer) save the lives of myriad aliens in very unconventional ways. The show intentionally throws audiences into a high concept world where there are no humans, and the species featured have bizarre biology and inherent abilities. It’s deep end sci-fi, yet the personal problems facing the doctor/besties are entirely relatable.
“As a fan of sci-fi, I prefer the things that don’t hold your hand as much,” Dunlap says of her choice to make audiences work to acclimate to the world of Sleech and Klak.
“But it’s always that fine line, because I want this show to be accessible. I
feel like a lot of sci-fi is alienating. It’s male. Some people really like that very hard sci-fi. But personally, I am drawn to the things that are more characterbased and so I wanted this to be welcoming.” Through the deep friendship between Sleech and Klak, the mundane and profane get showcased as they goad one another to overcome their personal issues while navigating around the hospital’s eclectic staff of other alien healers, including empath Dr Plowp (Kieran Culkin), ancient being Dr Vlam (Maya Rudolph) and salty Nurse Tup (Natasha Lyonne).
“It was such a hard show to write because you’ve got the hospital idea, you’ve got
the sci-fi on top of it, but then you want something that feels emotionally relevant,” Dunlap says. “Every single episode was a learning curve.”
Dunlap says that the freedom of the genre and the lack of human rules for her characters opened the door for her imagination to run wild, with ideas you’d never get in any other series. “There’s an episode in season one about getting a sexually transmitted infection, where you turn into the last person that you slept with,” she laughs. “So I was trying really hard to find [ideas] that were cool, and make me uneasy in some way.”
Through Sleech and Klak, Dunlap also gets to work through real world issues like debilitating anxiety (which she has experienced), professional ennui and the challenge of connecting. “I knew it was a two-hander from the get-go because I really love female friendships,” Dunlaps explains. “I really liked the idea that they’re very competent. They love each other and they’re always kind to each other, but they do call each other out.”
Dunlap says the series has a “case of the week” structure, but Sleech and Klak will have complex histories revealed throughout the first two seasons.
“What’s nice is that Klak’s season is season one, and in season two, it’s Sleech’s,” she says of their arcs. “It was nice being able to produce season one knowing Sleech’s backstory will be in there, because she’s much more secretive.
“Those things – just in terms of worldbuilding – really inform who the characters are. Even though this is sci-fi, it’s also about distant moms or challenging moms or mentally ill moms or whatever the issues are,” she jokes.
The series also embodies the signature alien art style of Robin Eisenberg, who serves as the production designer. All the characters are drawn with odd details and bold colours, which means every frame holds something visually strange.
“I just really liked the idea of pretty sci-fi, and it’s got a female gaze thing,” Dunlaps says of the look of the show. “I love the colours, and our artists are really incredibly talented. There are many beautiful [animated] shows now, but so many do fall victim to being the great grandsons of The Simpsons.
“We wanted something that looks different. And I wanted it to be beautiful, but also wanted it to be funny when it all explodes,” she laughs. Which it most certainly will…
The Second Best Hospital In The Galaxy is on Prime Video from 23 February.