{"id":383108,"date":"2026-04-09T11:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/383108\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T11:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:45:09","slug":"a-supremely-tense-and-addictively-terse-drama-its-like-er-minus-george-clooney-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/383108\/","title":{"rendered":"A supremely tense and addictively terse drama. It\u2019s like ER minus George Clooney \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hospital dramas have been the absolute pits since ER<\/a> breathed its last \u2013 but now this ailing genre has had a miracle resurrection. It has been brought back to life by The Pitt, a supremely tense and addictively terse drama starring ER\u2019s Noah Wyle<\/a> as a hard\u2011pressed senior medic in an overcrowded A&E unit in downtown Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

The Pitt has been a long time coming to Ireland, having scooped multiple awards since its debut in the US last year. But with the launch here of HBO Max<\/a>, it has finally crossed the Atlantic and proves worth the wait. A box set of series one has already dropped and new episodes of season two air weekly. It\u2019s worth seeking out \u2013 even if you\u2019re the sort who hates the sight of blood and has been known to faint when a doctor points a needle in your direction (raises hand).<\/p>\n

The reason for this is that The Pitt isn\u2019t just a medical drama. It is a gripping example of the underrated genre of entertainment in which competent people quietly get on with their job. That begins with Wyle\u2019s Dr Michael \u201cRobby\u201d Robinavitch. He is neither a charmer nor a monster, just a regular guy trying to make it through a shift without anyone dying.<\/p>\n

This is quite the challenge, given the chaos that reigns at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Centre. That brings us to the big surprise: the jarring resemblance The Pitt bears to the joys of the Irish medical system.<\/p>\n

In The Pitt, tired and angry masses stew in perpetual Hieronymus Bosch\u2011style A&E queues, nurses and doctors are overworked and exhausted, everything seems to teeter on a perpetual knife\u2011edge and is made more difficult by administrative interference from above. And yet somehow, this is HBO \u2013 not the HSE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wyle is great as a guy who has just about had enough but has no choice but to keep toiling in the trenches. It is quite the obstacle course that his character must negotiate \u2013 on his first morning alone, he must deal with two victims of a railway accident, a toddler who ingested his dad\u2019s hidden supply of cannabis gummies and a marathon runner who has crocked his kidneys with over\u2011exercise. Then there is the politics \u2013 including an awkward stand\u2011off with a fainting intern whose mother just happens to be a bigwig on the ward.<\/p>\n

Each episode of The Pitt takes place over the course of a shift and is filmed chronologically, so that the escalating <\/p>\n

weariness of the actors throughout the shoot mirrors that of their characters. It isn\u2019t original \u2013 ultimately it is just ER with bonus grit and minus George Clooney<\/a> \u2013 but in the stifling world of streaming television, The Pitt hits like a breath of fresh air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hospital dramas have been the absolute pits since ER breathed its last \u2013 but now this ailing genre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,7217,4302,6729,6151,85,46,69912,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-383108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-george-clooney","10":"tag-hbo","11":"tag-hbo-max","12":"tag-hse","13":"tag-il","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-noah-wyle","16":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}