It’s increasingly rare that the best show of the year wins the top prize at the Emmys, but that’s exactly what’s happened with The Pitt.
But, while the medical drama was released in the US to positive reviews in January, the show is still yet to find a home in the UK.
There is currently no word on when British viewers will be able to see The Pitt, but it’s strongly rumoured the show will arrive in time for its second season in January 2026.
With HBO Max gearing up for its arrival in the UK in the new year, it could be that the show has been earmarked as the one to lure in prospective subscribers.
After a slow start, The Pitt became a propulsive watch, generating excited word-of-mouth and earning a solid fanbase. Its success has resulted in five Emmys, including one for lead star Noah Wyle.
The show marks Wyle’s return to the medical genre for the first time since ER. Instead of Dr John Carter, he plays Dr Robby Robinovitch, who leads ER workers in the under-funded Pittsburgh hospital through a 15-hour shift that gets increasingly worse.
Each episode spans an hour of the shift.
The worse things get for the characters, the better they get for viewers –The Pitt is a series that gets increasingly better with every new outing, building upon the strong characterisation deftly doled out in earlier instalments that pay off in big ways when the unbearably tense final few hours roll around.
Joining Wyle in the cast are Tracy Ifeachor, Patrick Ball, Katherine LaNasa – who also won an Emmy for her role – and Supriya Ganesh, who play his able team of doctors.
Meanwhile, the stars playing the medical students getting caught up in the drama include Isa Briones, Shabana Azeez, Ludwig actor Gerran Howell and Taylor Dearden, who is the daughter of Bryan Cranston.
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The Pitt made headlines before it started when the estate of ER creator Michael Crichton sued Warner Bros Television, accusing the series of being an unauthorised reboot of the hit emergency room drama.
Crichton’s estate, led by his widow Sherri, say they were in discussions with the studio about rebooting ER but failed to reach an agreement.
They have accused executive producer John Wells of a “personal betrayal,” arguing in the lawsuit that he and star Noah Wyle, who played Dr John Carter in ER, dreamed up The Pitt after the Crichton estate blocked plans to bring back the original show.
The lawsuit states: “The Pitt is ER. It’s not like ER. It’s not kind of ER. It’s not sort of ER. It is ER with the exact same executive producer, writer, star, production companies, studio and network as the planned ER reboot.”
However, the show’s creators, producers and writing team, including Wyle, Wells and R Scott Gemmil have denied such claims, stating: “The two shows do not share the same name, characters, universe, plot, iconography, or IP. As any viewer can see, the only similarities are that they share an actor (playing different characters) and are medical dramas that include common tropes of that genre.”
