New medical drama reigns
Characters in a hit US medical drama, now back on Neon and Sky Go, grapple with Covid’s new normals – and the difficulties ahead, writes James Croot.
Two-and-a-half years after its debut, some Kiwi viewers are only just discovering the delights of New Amsterdam. A United States medical drama with a cadre of memorable characters, something to say about the state of modern medicine (particularly in America) and offers up a solid dose of ‘‘the feels’’, it has been hiding out on Sky TV’s Neon and SoHo (and even free-to-air on Prime) until the last couple of weeks. Its first season has finally made its bow on Netflix and it has been the No 1 watched show here on the global streaming service virtually ever since.
It seems a whole new audience is lapping up the lives and loves of the staff and patients at ‘‘the oldest public hospital in America’’.
Inspired by real-life medical director Dr Eric Manheimer’s memoir Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital ,it follows idealist Dr Max Goodwin (The Blacklist’s Ryan Eggold) as he attempts to transform the creaky institution into something that can best serve his patients – the people of New York – often those without insurance.
‘‘How can I help?’’ is Max’s refrain pretty much throughout the first season, as he rails against injustice, inequality and attempts to keep his failing marriage together.
Of course, as has been the case with prime-time hospital-set ‘‘soaps’’, from St Elsewhere to Chicago Hope, ER, Grey’s Anatomy and The Resident, there are plenty of other crises among the supporting staff, be it drug addiction, relationship woes, cultural differences and genetic disorders. But unlike its modern day counterparts, Grey’s and The Resident, there’s a quietness, a subtlety and abundance of sensitivity and heart that makes it stand out.
The good news for new Amsterdam fans who’ve recently binge-watched their way through those 16 episodes on Netflix is that there’s not only a second season on Neon, but the third is now under way in the US and on that New Zealand-owned streaming service and Sky Go.
With the last series truncated by Covid-19 swamping the reallife hospitals of New York – the writers even had to replace a pandemic episode because it was too close to reality – events pick up with the worst seemingly over and vaccines now being administered to the hospital’s frontline workers.
But unlike The Resident’s recent one-and-done approach, the effects of the virus still very much linger and look likely to do so throughout upcoming episodes. That’s not only in the immediate, troubling sight of beloved neurology expert Vijay Kapoor (Anupam Kher) attached to a ventilator, but also in the emotional toll, as expressed by oncology head Helen Sharpe (former Doctor Who star Freema Agyeman) and Emergency Department boss Lauren Bloom (Janet Montgomery).
‘‘Friends, restaurants, intimacy – it all feels so strange, feels so wrong,’’ Sharpe laments, as she struggles with life after lockdown and attempting to rekindle a pre-Covid spark with recent arrival Cassian Shin (Daniel Dae Kim).
Bloom feels just as adrift. ‘‘I miss the worst of the pandemic. When ED was above capacity, it felt like I’d spent my whole life training for a moment that finally came. Now, I’m just supposed to pass patients off like it doesn’t matter.’’
‘‘We were at war, Lauren. It’s OK to miss the fight,’’ psychology department head Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine) reassures her. However, he has issues of his own, attempting to suppress an eating disorder, somewhat estranged from his partner and, in the seasonopening episode, trying to solve the riddle of whether a 747-pilot with bipolar disorder deliberately ditched his plane into the nearby river. It’s up to him and Max to try to determine what really happened, before the captain is hauled away by the authorities.
If that case-of-the-week all feels a little 2009 (when US Flight 1549 ended up in the Hudson under the command of Chesley ‘‘Sully’’ Sullenberger), it’s the one dated part of an episode that appears strikingly up-to-theminute and relevant for our ‘‘new normal’’ .
There are no fevered flights of fancy here (well, maybe just a little one, but it doesn’t involve characters long-since disappeared from the show). Instead, just heartfelt discussions and sobering assessments of what we’ve lost and the difficulties ahead.
One scene that’s both hilarious and outrage-inducing involves Max negotiating with other hospital heads around swapping of supplies. Forget toilet paper, life-saving and enhancing drugs are where the critical shortages are.
All confess to going to Home Depot to get extra ventilation tubing, while one laments that ‘‘my 15-year-old daughter has better access to drugs than me’’. All this frustration and the feeling that ‘‘the system abandoned us when we needed it most’’, has given Max new resolve.
‘‘I don’t want to fix the hospital any more. I want to tear it down and build something better.’’
That his idealistic schemes don’t always work is part of New Amsterdam’s charm. As his longsuffering board chair Karen Brantley (Debra Monk) observes, ‘‘all your wonderful ideas cause the most chaos’’.
Coupled with a diverse ensemble of players whose creations are nuanced and complex, rather than simply black-and-white, writing that might err on the side of sentimentality, but is never anything less than sharp and medical scenes that are visceral without leaving you feeling squeamish, and it’s easy to see why New Amsterdam is winning more admirers all the time and has been renewed for at least another two seasons.
Season 1 of New Amsterdam is now available to stream on Netflix, Neon and Sky Go. Season 2 is available on Neon and Sky Go, with Season 3 debuting on Neon and Sky Go now.