\u201cNever go back\u201d is not a mantra that today\u2019s TV executives seem to have pinned to their whiteboards. Frasier, Roseanne, Will & Grace and, perhaps most egregious of all, Sex and the City have been recently subjected to the television defibrillator, and they mostly returned to life with all the appeal and charm of Frankenstein\u2019s monster.<\/p>\n
Next it\u2019s the turn of the hit Noughties comedy Scrubs, which closed its doors in 2010 after nearly 200 episodes, countless catheter insertions and a dizzying amount of supply-closet sex. A brilliant season eight finale was soured by a ninth series \u2014 the ill-fated Scrubs: Med School \u2014 which attempted to transplant a fresh cast of youngsters into a new setting. It was a creative flatline that most fans have spent the past decade, er, scrubbing from their memories but the showrunner Bill Lawrence and his team apparently feel that we may be ready for more.<\/p>\n
Narrated as always by Zach Braff\u2019s JD, it has his Walter Mitty flights of whimsy, silly humour and gooey homilies (you know it is coming at the end of an episode when the piano incidentals tinkle into life). It\u2019s effectively the same show, with the gang reuniting when JD\u2019s old mentor Dr Cox (John C McGinley) lures him back from comfy suburbia to his old stomping ground of Sacred Heart to replace him as the new chief of medicine. Although an obvious thorn is that JD\u2019s relationship with Sarah Chalke\u2019s neurotic Elliot Reid has failed and she is still working there. As is his best pal Chris Turk (Donald Faison), who may be a senior surgeon but is burnt-out and miserable, despite still being married to the lovely Carla (Judy Reyes). <\/p>\n
JD\u2019s elevation means Cox has to take a back seat, effectively sidelining one of the best characters in the show (along with Neil Flynn\u2019s psychotic janitor, at least in early episodes). It also means the young ingenu is now a mentor to a fresh batch of recruits, which introduces worrying series nine vibes. One is a TikTok influencer and there\u2019s a kindly English intern who, surprisingly for someone from these shores, isn\u2019t an unscrupulous, unpleasant skinflint, but instead has the problem of being too kind.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Read more TV reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews<\/a><\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t always feel narratively coherent. In attempting to revive JD\u2019s adolescent bromance with Turk, a key component of old Scrubs, we get the bizarre sight of a middle-aged man and a married father of four acting like fratboy imbeciles. It\u2019s also interesting to note that JD seems reluctant to call his black friend \u201cChocolate Bear\u201d (Turk called him \u201cVanilla Bear\u201d); it\u2019s now become \u201cC Bear\u201d. And while Cox may still call Elliot \u201cBarbie\u201d, there\u2019s a stern HR person, Sibby (Vanessa Bayer), stalking the wards who has her work cut out, especially when it comes to \u201cthe Todd\u201d, the unreconstructed high-fiving surgeon who turns everything into a sexual boast.<\/p>\n So it feels odd, the pleasure of watching the same old Scrubs tempered by the slight feeling that we\u2019re getting reheated leftovers. A lot of the humour is still sharp and it has its old moral compass \u2014 there is an affecting storyline involving a man who cannot afford his heart medication. But what, you slightly wonder, is the point? Unless it\u2019s to allow us to slip into comfortable slippers. It feels nice, sure. But deep down you know they\u2019re a bit old and tatty and you should really buy a fresh pair. Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix<\/a>, the best Prime Video TV shows<\/a>, the best Disney+ shows<\/a>, the best Apple TV+ shows<\/a>, the best shows on BBC iPlayer<\/a>, the best shows on Sky and Now<\/a>, the best shows on ITVX<\/a>, the best shows on Channel 4<\/a> streaming, the best shows on Paramount+<\/a> and our favourite hidden gem TV shows<\/a>. Don\u2019t forget to check our critics\u2019 choices to what to watch this week<\/a>, and browse our comprehensive TV guide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cNever go back\u201d is not a mantra that today\u2019s TV executives seem to have pinned to their whiteboards.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-446341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Available on Disney+<\/p>\n