For anyone who loves the high-stakes intensity of TV medical dramas, 2025 is already shaping up to be an exciting year.
No less than three new series — on Max, Netflix, and Apple TV+ — are either available now or coming soon, all of which will offer viewers gripping storylines, complex characters, and plenty of heart-pounding moments in the emergency ward. Whether you’re drawn to the ethical dilemmas of cutting-edge medicine, the adrenaline rush of trauma cases, or the personal struggles of doctors and nurses on the front lines, these binge-worthy shows are ready to prescribe your next TV obsession. Here’s what to expect from each series, below.
The Pitt (now streaming, Max)
Chris Dye, a physician assistant in North Carolina, was watching Max’s new medical drama The Pitt when he noticed his heart starting to pound. A 20-second scene in the show took Dye back to the real-world Covid pandemic that Dye worked through, when he crewed Duke University Hospital’s Life Flight — rushing Covid patients to the hospital.
“I had firmly blocked all those things out,” Dye told The Wall Street Journal. But this particular scene in The Pitt, which involved doctors in protective gear intubating patients in an emergency ward, brought all the memories flooding back “in the worst kind of way.”
Which, when you think about it, is kind of a compliment to the show and to its obsession with getting the details of the medical profession right. In fact, many medical workers like Dye are already calling The Pitt is the most authentic, true-to-life medical drama since NBC’s ER (a fitting comparison, given that Max’s show comes from several veterans of the groundbreaking NBC series — in addition to Noah Wyle starring in both).
In The Pitt, Wyle plays Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, chief attendant in the emergency room of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. R. Scott Gemmill, who executive-produced more than half of the episodes across ER’s entire run, is the showrunner for The Pitt, which I should also note currently has a very strong 93% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. Each episode follows the emergency staff in real time, with the season starting at 7 a.m. and each successive episode representing a new hour of a single day’s shift.
“The myriad challenges facing the doctors, nurses, technicians, patients, and their families who work in the trenches of modern medicine have become only more pronounced in the decade and a half since we last visited their stories,” reads a joint statement from Gemmill, Wyle, and co-executive producer John Wells about the show. “We’re thrilled to be able to return to this world with the support of our partners and are looking forward to pushing the boundaries of dramatic realism and medical accuracy in following the lives of these heroic men and women.”
Dr. Vicki Norton, president-elect of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, told the WSJ that she connected with The Pitt in a way she never has with a TV medical drama before. She felt deeply moved by a scene when Wyle’s Dr. Robby gets so overwhelmed he has to force himself to make time to use the bathroom. Likewise, the Covid scene made her cry.
The show, she said, “is seeing me in a way that I’ve never felt seen before.”
Pulse (April 3, Netflix)
Not to be outdone, meanwhile, Netflix has its own medical drama teed up with some similarly strong creative firepower behind it.
Netflix’s Pulse takes viewers inside Miami’s busiest Level 1 trauma center, and the story is built around third-year resident Dr. Danny Simms (Willa Fitzgerald), who gets an abrupt promotion when the hospital’s beloved chief resident Dr. Xander Phillips (Colin Woodell) is suspended. Not only do the two of them have to find a way to work seamlessly together, but the hospital also goes into lockdown as a hurricane barrels toward it.
Oh, and the two of them have also shared a complicated and illicit romance. “The rest of the ER is left to process the fallout of their relationship while balancing their own challenges, both personal and professional, as they work under the pressure of life-or-death stakes,” Netflix explains. “Because for this tight-knit group of doctors, saving their patients’ lives is often less complicated than living their own.”
Of the three medical dramas on this list, Netflix’s is the one I’m the least enthused about because — well, be honest. When was the last time a Netflix series legitimately blew you away? The one thing that gives me hope in the case of Pulse: Its executive producer is Carlton Cuse, one of the creative minds behind Lost.
Berlin ER (Feb. 26, Apple TV+)
Finally, Apple TV+ is getting in on the medical drama game with a new German-language series that I’m particularly excited for.
One, simply because it’s Apple TV+ we’re talking about. Apple plays to win, with a hits-to-misses ratio that’s far more impressive than what we generally see from its bigger streaming rivals. Apple’s upcoming medical Berlin ER is also a non-English series, and if you’ve been an Apple TV+ subscriber for as long as I have, then you know that foreign language dramas tend to be among Apple’s absolute best (like Pachinko, Tehran, Drops of God, and La Maison, to name just a few).
Additionally, Berlin ER was co-created by a former ER physician, Samuel Jefferson (as well as filmmaker Viktor Jakovleski), ensuring a level of realism and emotional depth.
As for what it’s about, the show follows Dr. Parker (Haley Louise Jones), a talented but troubled young doctor seeking a fresh start in Berlin after facing personal and professional turmoil in Munich. Thrust into the chaotic environment of one of the city’s most overcrowded emergency rooms, she must navigate intense medical cases, demanding colleagues, and her own inner demons. The first two episodes will debut globally on February 26, with new episodes dropping weekly on Wednesdays through April 9.
Here’s a trailer for Berlin ER, and you can check out a sneak peek from Episode 1, courtesy of Apple, below:
