The Pitt Review

The Pitt's format is its argument. One episode is one hour of a shift, the camera does not leave the department, and there is no home life, no romance in a parking lot and no case that resolves at a convenient moment. What that produces is a procedural with the texture of documentary, and doctors have said in print how little of it they have to forgive. Noah Wyle, back in scrubs two decades after ER, plays Robby as a man being hollowed out in real time, and the performance carries a second season that reviewers rate even higher than the first.

The ensemble of residents and students is the other achievement, each given a real arc inside a structure that has no room for one. The criticism is consistent and fair: the show lives in ER's shadow by design and cannot always escape the comparison, and the second season leans on affection for the returning cast at the expense of its new arrivals. It is relentless, humane and better made than almost anything else on television right now.