6 January 2020
Code Black S1-3
Resident Director Dr Leanne Rorish (Marcia Gay Harden) manages four first-year residents in the overcrowded LA County Hospital ER. The show is based on the 2013 documentary of the same name, which followed the real-life doctor Ryan McGarry in the same emergency room.
Dr Rorish has a complicated past, and her daily life is a constant struggle to keep her trauma from affecting her work. Her impulsive style often brings her up against her colleagues, including Senior Nurse Jesse Salander (Luiz Guzman, who gives an even better performance in Perpetual Grace), and her fellow doctors.
Fans of ER will recognise the formula and the harrowing, organised chaos in the casualty ward, and Guzman and Harden both give decent performances. With episodes hovering at the 40-minute mark, the series in eminently bingeable, too.
Newsday said, “… from a technical perspective, there’s much to admire. The direction (by David Semel) is sharp and brisk. The story is reasonably uncluttered, in spite of the standard narrative threads that can entangle a hospital drama just as easily as enliven it.”
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