17 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 ego maniacs with god complexes, these compelling medical series are streaming 24/7 in case of an entertainment emergency.

1. Sullivan’s Crossing

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!

2. The Good Doctor S7

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.

3. Brilliant Minds

Zarchary Quinto’s (Star Trek: Beyond) character, Dr Oliver Wolf, shares more than a first name with late British neurologist Dr Oliver Sacks, who was the real-life inspiration for this medical drama.

One of the key things they have in common, aside from their dedication to their patients, is an unusual medical condition: prosopagnosia, nicknamed face blindness. Like Dr Sacks, Dr Wolf struggles to recognise people based on their facial features – including loved ones and even himself. He also struggles to connect facial cues to people’s emotional states. In real life, Dr Sacks learned other ways to identify people, like the size of their hands, what they typically wore, or how they walked.

Like Dr Sacks, Dr Wolf is able to use his condition as a starting point for connecting with patients. In episode 1, he teaches hacks for recognising people to a young mom who no longer recognises her own children following brain surgery. When Dr Wolf realises that she still recognises and responds emotionally to her children’s voices, he is able to work on a way forward with her.

Like Dr Sacks, Dr Wolf’s relationship with his patients doesn’t follow the usual case-diagnosis-cure pattern. For many of his patients with neurological disorders, there isn’t really a cure, just ways of adapting. So Dr Wolf plays the long game with patients like John Doe (Alex Ozerov-Meyer), an anonymous man who wakes up with Locked In Syndrome, and paramedic Katie Rodriguez (Mishel Prada), who suffers from chronic pain. But while using Dr Sacks’ cases as outlines for stories, Brilliant Minds updates and changes details to reflect updates to technology and patient care over the past 40 years. 

4. Malpractice

Smart, battle-hardened Dr Lucinda Edwards’ (Niamh Algar) life is turned upside down when a nightmare hospital shift ends in the death of an opioid overdose victim under the supervision of one of her junior doctors, Dr Ramya Morgan (Priyanka Patel).

Is Dr Edwards a capable, empathetic doctor and emergency room hero who faced down an armed gunman, or is she a shady, corner-cutting bully? While her colleagues and patients tell one story, the hospital administration starts painting a more sinister portrait of her actions when her inquest threatens to draw attention to a pharmaceutical conspiracy.

Written by former NHS doctor Grace Ofori-Attah, this British medical drama series pulls back the surgical mask to expose the pressures and politics of hospital life, and how these impact patients’ wellbeing and odds of survival.

5. Getting On S1-3

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 honeybadger. 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 (to 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 S1-2

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 (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 S1-2

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 S1-4

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’s snuck in 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 S8-13

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 S1-9

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 S1-4

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.

Transplant Seasons 1-3 are available to binge now, with Transplant Season 4 arriving from Monday, 27 January 2025.

14. Dr Death S1-2

In case the title of this true story didn’t give it away, Dr Christopher Duntsch is responsible for many untimely deaths, often referred to as a serial killer loose in the hospital. He was initially thought of as a rock star neurosurgeon, but these expectations were shattered by a string of gross malpractice cases, as the cavalier surgeon maimed and/or caused patients to die.

Joshua Jackson (fine, Pacey to all you Dawson’s Creek fans) plays the cold-blooded and sociopathic Duntsch, who could do no wrong. He’s supported, or you could say assisted, by Alec Baldwin  (30 Rock Season 1-7) and Christian Slater.

The true-crime anthology series returns in Season 2 to focus on “Miracle Man” Paolo Macchiarini (Edgar Ramirez), a charming surgeon renowned for his innovative operations. When investigative journalist Benita Alexander (Mandy Moore) approaches him for a story, the line between personal and professional begins to blur. But as a group of doctors halfway across the world make shocking discoveries of their own that call everything about Paolo into question, Bianca learns how far Paolo will go to protect his secrets.

15. New Amsterdam S1-5

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, 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 Ryan Eggold taking on a role that would’ve been perfect for Michael J Fox.

16. House S1-8

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.

17. HBO’s The Knick S1-2

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.