A new NBC comedy debuting this fall looks set to take us back to the glory days of the network’s sitcoms like The Office and Scrubs.
St. Denis Medical, from Superstore and American Auto co-creators Justin Spitzer and Eric Ledgin, is a mockumentary about an understaffed and underfunded hospital in Oregon — a place where the dedicated doctors and nurses are trying their best to balance treating patients while maintaining their own sanity.
A mockumentary is a format that works well when it’s done right and has a certain charm to it for fans of sitcoms like me, a fact that also explains why NBC’s Peacock has just ordered to series a spinoff of The Office. Streamers like Netflix, of course, have done much to pull away the network TV audience that would even be available to watch a show like St. Denis Medical, with Netflix especially offering a high volume of its own low quality shows in the process.
Be honest: When’s the last time you watched a quality sitcom from a streamer? Barring exceptions like Ted Lasso or Schitt’s Creek, they’re few and far between.
Call me old-school, but I’ll be tuning in to NBC on Tuesday nights this fall to watch St. Denis Medical, the cast of which includes Wendi McClendon-Covey as a hospital administrator. It’s a hospital, she tells our sister publication The Wrap, “that’s kind of a safety hospital where they have to take everybody, whether you’re indigent or have no insurance. We’re the ones that catch everybody.”
And because of that fact, the hospital in this series is in a perpetual mode of fundraising.
The rest of the cast includes David Alan Grier, from Joe Pickett and In Living Color. Grier stars as ER doctor Ron, who’s also a down-on-his-luck divorcee. Rounding out the cast are Allison Tolman (Fargo, Good Girls), Josh Lawson (Superstore), Mekki Leeper (The Sex Life of College Girls), and Kahyun Kim (Cocaine Bear).
“It’s a great cast,” she continues, in an interview you can watch below. “And I’m sorry, but hospitals are funny. They don’t mean to be, and they may not be funny if it’s happening to you … This would kind of be like The Office, but in a hospital setting
“My character is like: We’re a safety hospital now, but you give me five years and I will make this a destination hospital! People are going to come in from all over the West Coast to have their mammograms here! Meanwhile, they’re still using Windows 95.”
