16 medical dramas to stream in an entertainment emergency

Licensed to kill, doctors are automatically trusted with our bodies, whether it’s for a sore knee or a couple of hours under the knife on the operating table. So why wouldn’t we want to know how our doctor’s doing at his day job?

From crotchety savants to egomaniacs with god complexes, these compelling medical series are streaming 24/7 in case of an entertainment emergency.

Quick list

1. Doc Season 1
2. Married to Medicine Season 11
3. Sullivan’s Crossing Season 1-2
4. The Good Doctor Season 7
5. Getting On Season 1-3
6. Accramedic Season 1-2
7. Hartklop Season 1
8. In Treatment Season 1-4
9. Hartstog
10. Wounds
11. Binnelanders Seasons 8-14
12. Chicago Med Season 6-9
13. Transplant Season 1-4
14. New Amsterdam Season 1-5
15. House Season 1-8
16. HBO’s The Knick Season 1-2
    

1. Doc Season 1

Medical drama series inspired by the life of Italian doctor Pierdante Piccioni, a former Emergency Room Chief of Medicine who lost 12 years of his memory after a car accident in 2013.

In the series, Dr Amy Larsen (Molly Parker), Chief of Internal Medicine at Westside Hospital, wakes up after a car accident having lost eight years of her memory – including her divorce from her husband, Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael Hamda (Omar Metwally) – and the death of their child, her secret affair with Chief Resident Dr Jake Heller (Jon Ecker), the reason she’s on thin ice with the hospital board, the reputations that she has threatened to ruin, and all work she has done to keep abreast of developments in her field. 

2. Married to Medicine Season 11

Reality series. Whether they’re doctors themselves like Atlanta doctors Dr Jacqueline Walters, Dr Simone Whitmore, and Dr Heavenly Kimes, or married to medical professionals like attorney Phaedra Parks (a fan favourite on The Real Housewives of Atlanta) or businesswoman Lateasha “Sweet Tea” Lunceford, the pressures of a job that has to always come first offers some unique challenges to marriage and family life. But they’re not only saving lives, they’re serving looks and drama, too!

This season we have a Cowboy Carter photoshoot, a Bridgerton-themed dance lesson for Toya and Eugene’s grand ball, Georgiaton, and a nip-slip. Heavenly and Quad get called out for mocking Sweet Tea on social media, Dr Jackie, Dr Heavenly and Dr Simone visit former VP Kamala Harris at the White House, Phaedra debuts her new boy toy, and a beach trip to Key West turns into the most chaotic moments of Love Island for Quad, Dr G and King.  

3. Sullivan’s Crossing Season 1-2

Based on The Virgin River author Robyn Carr’s bestselling book series of the same name, Sullivan’s Crossing follows neurosurgeon Maggie Sullivan (Morgan Kohan), who scuttles back to her childhood home in small town Nova Scotia with her tail between her legs following her arrest and a medical negligence and wrongful death lawsuit that threatens her licence to practice. 

As she reconnects with her ailing estranged father Sully (Scott Patterson) and their community, she also finds herself drawn to Sully’s assistant, Cal (Chad Michael Murray). But this isn’t a Hallmark Christmas movie, so while Maggie is stuck doing basic medical meddling whenever the townsfolk need help, she’s biting her nails over when she can go back to brain surgery. She paid for those student loans!

4. The Good Doctor Season 7

Dr Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) is a surgeon with autism and Savant syndrome. As the final season begins, Shaun and his wife Lea (Paige Spara) are adjusting to being first-time parents. Shaun’s mentor Dr Glassman (Aaron Schiff) is battling with the impact of the mini-stroke he had during Season 6, which threatened his career as a neurosurgeon after Shaun exposed him. But he’s still taking on extra work as both hospital interim co-president, and grandfather to Shaun’s son. And Shaun finds himself reluctantly stepping into a mentor position with Charlie (Kayla Cromer), an autistic medical student.

Having Charlie onboard highlights the different presentations of autism, and how early diagnosis and support has helped Charlie, compared to Shaun, who was always told that being autistic would hold him back. And oh yeah, there are patients around, too, since all this drama takes place where they like to hang out, cough, and bleed.

5. Getting On Season 1-3

This American adaptation of the British medical sitcom of the same name stars Niecy Nash, Laurie Metcalfe, Alex Bortsein and Mel Rodriguez as workers at the Billy Barnes Extended Care Unit of the run-down Mount Palms Memorial Hospital in Long Beach, California. The unit is meant to care for the elderly, but the staff are battling daily red tape, with even the decision of who’ll clean up after an incontinence incident requiring reams of paperwork. Is it a comedy, or a bleak reflection of life?

Director of Medicine Dr Jenna James (Laurie Metcalfe) prides herself on her skills as a manager, while actually having the interpersonal skills of a meth-addicted honey badger. Aside from using the patients for research, syphoning off profits to fund her own research and playing fast and loose with the hospice programme, Jenna is charmless, blunt and dismissive (or downright abusive) to the nursing staff and the patients, who’re just career stepping stones to her. She’s out there every day making a bad system worse. 

6. Accra Medic Season 1-2

Written and directed by Emmanuel Apea Jr, this drama series explores health inequity in the Ghanaian medical system through the experiences of staff at the Accra Medic hospital. Keep your blood pressure monitor handy, because all the doctors are infected with dangerous levels of the drama virus!

Dr Acheampong (Osei Kwame Bentil) was originally brought from abroad to run the hospital. But Dr Mohammed (Edward Agyekum Kuffuor) pulled strings, and thanks to his political connections in high places and with rich associates, he snatched the job as hospital head (or superintendent) instead, prompting frequent showdowns between the two doctors. Dr Bafour (Aaron Adatsi) starts a sugar mommy relationship with a patient. Dr Elorm (Kweku Elliot) loses his heart to both Akua (Desiree Crenstil) and Dr Debbie (Nubuke Gadzekpo). And after busy days on the wards, nurse Christiana (Ninette Orleans Thompson) has to go home to a second shift of drama with her currently unemployed and unsupportive husband, David (Daniel Delong), a banker who lost his job due to the financial sector clean-up. 

7. Hartklop Season 1

This South African, Afrikaans-language medical drama series takes us inside the Beyers Naudé Academic Hospital, a state hospital in Johannesburg and the top training hospital in the country. 

As with Grey’s Anatomy, we see the hospital through the personal struggles of newly fledged doctors: GP Elani (Simoné Pretorius), emergency medicine specialist Karima (Carla Classen), and would-be surgeon Fezile (Oros Mampofu). Elani comes from a privileged background but finds that having mommy for a lawyer can’t protect her or her patients when she makes a fatal mistake. There’s more family drama to come as Fezile’s dad becomes a patient, and Karima falls for her clinical associate Dr Louw van Onselen (David Louw).

In an effort to be as true to life as possible, the hospital scenes were filmed at the Solomon Stix Morewa Memorial Hospital and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The medical storylines are all based on real-life cases, a team of doctors acted as advisers, and trained theatre nurses helped with the filming of the operating scenes.

8. In Treatment Season 1-4

Gabriel Byrne plays psychotherapist Paul Weston in Seasons 1-3 of award-winning HBO drama series In Treatment. Dr Weston wants to solve all of his patients’ problems from the comfort of his home. And thanks to Gabriel’s cool, calm and collected performance and reassuring voice, you believe he could do it, no matter how kooky the patient (look out for Blair Underwood and Mia Wasikowska), how complex their problems, or how deep their romantic obsession with him goes. The issue comes in when Paul starts to doubt his own abilities and “loses patience with his patients”. He needs to get therapy himself with his former mentor, psychotherapist Dr Gina Toll (Dianne Wiest).

A new therapist arrives in the fourth and final season, as Emmy winner Uzo Aduba stars as the observant, empathetic therapist Dr Brooke Taylor, who takes over from Dr Weston. As with Dr Weston, though, Dr Taylor finds her encounters with patients reawakening her own past, unresolved trauma, as she draws on those experiences to try to connect with them, and urge them to be honest about what they’re dealing with.

9. Hartstog

South African Afrikaans-language docudrama movie Hartstog was originally released exactly 50 years after pioneering cardiac surgeon Dr Christiaan Barnard and his team performed the world’s first successful heart transplant on 3 December 1967. 

Screenwriter Deon Opperman tackles this medical breakthrough in three parallel storylines. In the first, the Washkansky family anxiously await a heart donor for Louis (Russel Savadier), who’s seriously ill. In the second, the Darvall family suffer a tragic loss in an accident and make a brave sacrifice after 25-year-old Denise Darvall (Caitlin Kilburn) is declared brain dead. And in the third, Dr Chris Barnard (Carel Nel) leads a team of 30 healthcare experts at the hospital to give Louis a second chance at life, while Chris leans on the emotional support of his wife Aletta (Quinne Brown) and his surgeon brother, Marius (Jacques Bessenger), who assists during the operation.

10. Wounds

The series title refers to not only the wounds that get treated in the fictional Healing Hands Hospital, but also the inner wounds that the medical professionals – especially nurses – grapple with daily.

Neo Masonda (Samke Makhoda) is the new intern nurse at Healing Hands but she snuck in there using her sister Busiswe’s identity because the skeletons in Neo’s closet forced her to drop out of nursing school. Now she’s forced to keep up this façade. Will she be caught out? That’s the drama!

Heart-breaking stories, from fatal sickness to miscarriages, will be part of this series’ storylines that aim to tug at viewers’ heartstrings with a surgical precision, while it shines a light on the difficulties that our public hospitals face, from financial issues to faulty and old equipment.

11. Binnelanders Seasons 8-13

Gossip spreads like wildfire and drama is always just around the corner in the halls of Binneland Clinic in the Afrikaans soapie Binnelanders. At Koster (Hans Strydom) rules the hospital with an iron fist, and there is nothing more important to him than his hospital and family. He will move heaven and earth to protect those two, and he isn’t above breaking the law (but keeping his hands clean) to ensure it.

Binneland Clinic is one of the most prestigious private hospitals in Pretoria, so making the hospital profitable and hiring only the best doctors, surgeons and nurses on their staff to serve their patients are of the highest priorities. But it’s not always smooth sailing, even when you have the best of the best… Enemies always find a way to slither in and damage the hospital’s reputation or, even worse, put patients in danger.

12. Chicago Med Season 1-9

Working in the trauma unit of a hospital isn’t something that just any nurse or doctor can do. You need nerves of steel and the ability to think on your feet and make quick and accurate decisions when a patient is wheeled into the ER.

The doctors and nurses in the medical drama Chicago Med know what to do when those doors swing open, they’re on the top of their game, and they don’t just need to save lives, they want to. In the face of tragedy, they bring life and light, even if it means they must give up a part of themselves.

In the emergency room, it doesn’t matter whether or not the patient can pay for care, it’s the medical professionals’ duty to save lives. And that is what the brave personnel of Chicago Med do.

13. Transplant Season 1-4

Named as Canadian television’s breakout star of 2020, Hamza Haq plays Bashir “Bash” Hamed, a battlefield trauma surgeon who must redo his medical training in order to practice at York Memorial Hospital after arriving in Canada as a refugee. This fresh and timely concept separates Transplant from other similar medical dramas and not just because he goes from skewering kebabs to drilling his boss’s head. Please don’t try this at home or the office.

It’s not quite Doc MacGyver, but both were filmed in the same country, which gives the series a different spin to American medical procedurals. Transplant’s clever title, sharp performances, suspenseful ER pacing and humble star offer insights into the immigrant experience with heartfelt story lines about fitting in, shaping up and being accepted. Oh, and House… sorry, Dr Bishop, is played by that Scottish actor, John Hannah.

14. New Amsterdam Season 1-5

Medical dramas often get by on a hospital’s 24/7 influx of ceaseless trauma, emergencies and tough calls. Saying stuff like “stat”, “intubate” or “bring the paddles” may make you sound like you know what you’re doing. However, these shows are not a substitute for a real medical qualification and you shouldn’t try this at home.

New Amsterdam sticks to a number of medical genre tropes but what’s refreshing is that it makes you want to be a better person. The series follows the brilliant and charming Dr Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold), a new medical director, who breaks rules in order to fix the health system at America’s oldest public hospital. Max-Good-Win could be the hospital’s slogan but sums up the spirit of the series with Eggold taking on a role that would’ve been perfect for Michael J Fox.

15. House Season 1-8

Hugh Laurie isn’t American and can also do a really silly high-pitched voice. Nowadays it’s easy to see why his next biggest international roles were in the films Tomorrowland and 101 Dalmations.

Accessing a level of his own brilliance and limitless wit as an actor, he embraces the antisocial maverick Dr Gregory House, who treats colleagues like a crack squad and patients like puzzles. No, not like the electric buzzer game Operation … more like the placebo effect of colour-coded Smarties.

Starring in 176 episodes and playing the titular character of House will do that to a person. To make matters worse, Laurie is so gosh-darn perfect as the brilliant House he kind of did it to himself. Champagne problems, right? The walking stick prop has become synonymous with the character of Dr Gregory House, but it’s getting to the point where the legendary actor will probably be grateful for all the practice.

16. HBO’s The Knick Season 1-2

It’s early in the 20th Century and the Knickerbocker Hospital is fighting to keep its lights on by offering groundbreaking medical procedures performed by Dr John Thackery (Clive Owen), the head surgeon with a cocaine and opium addiction. In a pre-antibiotics era, hospital patients from New York’s largely poor and immigrant population face a high chance of sepsis-related death, but this does not deter the maverick Dr Thackery, who continues to push the boundaries of medicine. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the two-season series has a 92% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes.