None of us like to go to the hospital, right? I mean, I spent a few nights in one several years back over some health issues and to be honest, florescent lights and hospital gowns still give me the willies.
So it’s weird, then, that my favourite TV programme of 2025 so far is a white-knuckle ride through 15 hours or so in a heaving hospital emergency room.
The Pitt caught me off guard, because I’m not really a hospital-TV show guy. Sure, I watched ER a fair bit back in the day, along with everyone else, but gave up somewhere before season 28 or however long it ran. I’ve seen a handful of episodes of House but never watched a single Grey’s Anatomy or Shortland Street or The Good Doctor.
Yet The Pitt is addictive, anchored by a charismatic performance by ER veteran Noah Wyle as a scruffy and exhausted attending physician at a bustling Pittsburgh trauma hospital.
The central conceit is that The Pitt is set in one incredibly busy day at the hospital, told over a series of episodes set from 7am to 10pm. It instantly gives The Pitt a propulsive energy that means you immediately want to know what’s going to happen next and helps damp down the soap-opera sappiness that muddles many medical shows. Brought to you by many of the people behind 1990s ER, it’s dense with an impressive medical detail that never distracts from the fundamental work – saving lives.
Hospitals are busy, overworked and understaffed places, in New Zealand and everywhere else, and in a single day The Pitt deals with accidents, traumas, overdoses, pregnancies, shootings and worse. Everyone here is having a bad day, and yet despite how dark it gets The Pitt summons up a lightness of spirit echoed by its workers – the only possible way to get through a day at the hospital.
The Pitt feels like a microcosm of America in 2025 – broken, hurting, but still hunting for that essential decency despite unfortunate events constantly crashing our way. Without being overly preachy about it, it hits on hot-button issues like abortion, opiate abuse, gun violence, pandemic trauma and anti-vaxxers.
Wyle, who once upon a time was the fresh-faced newbie in ER, brings years of experience being a ‘pretend doctor’ to his role, and anchors the series with his battered idealism. But there’s a lot of great acting here, including Isa Briones as a cocky intern, Katherine LaNasa as the charge nurse and Fiona Dourif as a harried resident with a troubled past.
I’m constantly awed by people who give their lives to the medical profession, enduring hard hours and traumatic experiences. By taking a single day and showing how chaotic and important work in the ER is, The Pitt is vastly entertaining and harrowing at the same time. It’s extraordinary.
Nik Dirga 