Concept

Medical drama

Summary
A medical drama is a television show or film in which events center upon a hospital, clinic, physician's office, an ambulance staff, or any medical environment. Most recent medical dramatic programming goes beyond the events pertaining to the characters' jobs and portray some aspects of their personal lives. A typical medical drama might have a storyline in which two doctors fall in love. Communications theorist Marshall McLuhan, in his 1964 work on the nature of media, predicted success for this particular genre on TV because the medium "creates an obsession with bodily welfare". The longest running medical drama in the world is the British series Casualty, airing since 1986, and the longest running medical soap opera is General Hospital running since 1963. City Hospital, which first aired in 1951, is usually considered to be the first televised medical drama. (The first serialized medical drama was probably the Dr. Kildare film series (1937-1947), starring a number of actors in the eponymous role, and Lionel Barrymore throughout the series.) Medic, which featured Richard Boone, ran two seasons, from 1954 to 1956. The genre became a staple of prime time television with the enormous popularity of Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey, both debuting in 1961. The BBC series Dr. Finlay's Casebook (1962–1971) is an early example of another common variant of the genre in which a medical practice is used as a focus for stories detailing the life of a (usually small) community. The long running Australian series A Country Practice (1981–1993) is a later example of this subgenre. From 1969 to 1976, the series Marcus Welby, M.D. and Medical Center were extremely popular for their both orthodox and unorthodox way of presenting medical cases. In 1972, the long-running series, Emergency!, starring Robert Fuller and Julie London, was the first medical drama ever to combine both, a fire department paramedic rescue program with an emergency room in a general hospital, which also focused on real-life rescues.
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Related concepts (1)
Grey's Anatomy
Grey's Anatomy is an American medical drama television series focusing on the personal and professional lives of surgical interns, residents, and attendings at the fictional Seattle Grace Hospital. The series premiered on March 27, 2005, on ABC as a mid-season replacement. The show's title is an allusion to Gray's Anatomy, a classic human anatomy textbook. Writer Shonda Rhimes developed the pilot and served as showrunner, head writer, and executive producer until stepping down in 2015.