The Pitt review: Thrilling, trailblazing; the next best show of 2025 is already here, mere weeks after Netflix’s Adolescence

Also read – A Gentleman in Moscow review: Utterly irresistible, the most gloriously entertaining show of the year finds Ewan McGregor in towering form

A still from The Pitt.

The troubled teen is one of the dozens of patients that Dr Robby and his team treat in The Pitt. They also cross paths with a man whose wife is slowly poisoning him because she suspects him of having committed a heinous crime; they go on a wildly emotional journey with the parents of a deceased youngster who had decided to donate his organs in the event of his death; they offer advice to a pregnant teen desperate for an abortion, and they collectively mourn the passing of a young girl who died trying to save her sister from drowning. Each episode unfolds in real time, and the entire season is mean to capture one shift in the lives of these characters.

The Pitt isn’t your typical medical drama — not that it doesn’t rely on cliches; it does. But it gets away with it on the strength of pure craftsmanship. The Pitt aims to be the most realistic portrayal of an ER environment ever put on the screen. The real-time gimmick is incredibly immersive, but the show doesn’t restrict itself to creating claustrophobic thrills. It’s also deeply political. For instance, when a ‘Karen’ punches another patient in the face for asking her to mask up, she is put in her place by the senior resident Dr Langdon: “When we perform surgery on you, would you like us to have our masks on or off? We want to respect your personal choices,” he says sarcastically.

Dr Langdon has one of the more prominent narrative arcs of the show; he’s talented, but, like so many of his colleagues, is dealing with personal trauma in unhealthy ways. Like every other medical drama, The Pitt also begins with a group of interns being given a lay of the land. Among them is Whittaker, an under-confident student who experiences the proverbial baptism by fire on his first day. There’s the rebellious Dr Santos, whose impulsive decisions are often fuelled by her distressing past. Dr Javadi is a prodigy who wants to escape from under the shadow of her domineering mother; Dr King is on the spectrum, which makes her uncommonly empathetic towards patients. She notices that a trans patient has been misgendered in the hospital records, and assures her that the error will be corrected. Her older colleagues learn from her, just as she does from them.

The Pitt switches perspective with the elegance of a figure skater. In one moment you could be witnessing a tense surgery with Dr Langdon at the helm, and in the next, you could be following Whittaker and Javadi on a mission to the rooftop to collect an emergency blood drop-off. A season-long arc involves Dr McKay — a recovering addict — balancing her life as a single mother and her responsibilities as a life-saver. This, in many ways, is the central conflict of The Pitt — the personal versus the professional. Katherine LaNasa plays Dana, the ‘charge nurse’ who has been working for over three decades in the ER. Not a single limb is stitched without her knowledge. She has pictures of her children on her desk, even though she is barely able to sit on it. The events of this day make her question whether she even wants to continue.

Read more – Ripley review: Andrew Scott delivers the performance of the year in rip-roaring masterpiece, among Netflix’s best shows ever

A still from The Pitt.

It wouldn’t be right to reveal what goes down in the three or four climactic episodes, but The Pitt builds towards it in a manner that is both contrived and confident. Perhaps if it hadn’t chained itself to the real-time gimmick, this plot line would’ve felt less clumsy. But otherwise, The Pitt is fleet-footed, efficient, and exceptionally well-made. It trusts the audience with complex jargon, because it utilises tried-and-tested screenwriting tricks to convey drama. Senior doctors often test the interns and the younger residents on how to perform certain procedures. It’s a neat way of letting the audience in on the doctors’ split-second decision-making, and an excellent way to set up the stakes of every scene. This also allows certain characters to reveal, over the course of 15 episodes, what their strengths and weaknesses are. By the end, you know exactly who should be summoned to oversee a patient just by looking at their injuries. It’s like how Top Gun: Maverick convinced audiences that they, too, could fly alongside Tom Cruise because of how effectively the script had explained his mission.

But the highlight of The Pitt isn’t the impeccable blocking, the war movie-like intensity, or even the moments of soaring sentimentality. The show’s highlight is Wyle. As Dr Robby, he’s like a combination of King Leonidas from 300 and Steve Rogers from the Captain America movies. Here’s a man who is barely keeping it together — his skills are both a burden and a blessing — but is often required to juggle between different roles in the span of a few minutes. He’s a mentor, a wartime general, and a corporate slave rolled into one. But he’s also a friend, a father, and a fatigued mascot of masochism. The Pitt is a plotless show, essentially; it’s entirely character-driven. And Dr Robby has the potential to become as memorable as Walter White and Don Draper. The show honours healthcare professionals, but in a way, it also pays tribute to the massively talented actors who spend their entire careers working on television, waiting, perhaps, to one day be offered roles like this.

The Pitt
Creator – R Scott Gemmill
Cast – Noah Wyle, Tracy Ifeachor, Patrick Ball, Katherine LaNasa, Supriya Ganesh, Fiona Dourif, Taylor Dearden, Isa Briones, Shabana Azeez
Rating – 5/5