The Pitt (2025)
The staff of Pittsburgh's Trauma Medical Center work around the clock to save lives in an overcrowded and underfunded emergency department.
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19 films that influenced The Pitt
What critics say influenced The Pitt
…he's clearly panicking at the thought of leaving his ER in the state it's in…
It is a splash-of-cold-water reminder of how vulnerable these workers are dealing with some angry people every day.
One of its recurrent tensions is how much time doctors spend with patients: The hospital administrators simultaneously want doctors to see sick people more quickly and still receive higher patient-satisfaction scores, and that impossible demand weighs on “the pit” and its backed-up waiting room.
I’m a sucker for the old-school “ER docs versus surgeons” rivalry, and we get a good taste of it here when the last victim from the shooting arrives…
…life in the ER is one plagued by human misery…
Dana continues to show Emma around the ER.
By grafting old-school procedural pleasures onto a 24-esque real-time format, the show produced a genuinely novel structure in the post-prestige era that was impossible to look away from.
Because we’re watching a day in the life of the hospital spread across a full season à la 24, we can anticipate checking back in with characters as the clock ticks on.
…while the first season was telling one long story stretched across a single day, with each episode covering about an hour of time (a concept once popularized by Fox's jingoistic "war on terror" hit "24")…
The Pitt freshens up the hospital genre by splicing the intensity of The Bear, the urgency of 24, and a bit of House’s medical mystery into a viewing experience that starts off slow, but keeps on running once it gets its legs.
…it’s a 24-style “one hour of TV = one hour life” tour through one 15-hour shift for senior attending Dr. Michael “Robby” Rabinavitch (Wyle).
…this medical drama–meets–24 season…
Grey’s Anatomy is not the only option for comparison here.
However, unlike Grey’s Anatomy, the drama of the characters in The Pitt takes a backseat to the patients’ issues.
…while The Pitt mostly aims to give us a realistic look at life inside a busy, underfunded hospital rather than build thematic ties between patients or storylines like perhaps some other medical dramas aim to…
Sentimental, saccharine, soapy — these are some of the words that might have appeared on the diagnosis charts of past hospital-set hits, like Grey’s Anatomy and ER, which often centred doctors and nurses’ personal lives as much or more so than the challenges posed by their patients.
St. Elsewhere featured Denzel Washington and Mark Harmon, ER had George Clooney, a young Noah Wyle, and Julianna Margulies, and Grey’s Anatomy had Patrick Dempsey, Sandra Oh, and dozens of other hot docs.
It feels like watching characters who don’t know they’re in an escape room. Basically, it’s The Pitt.
Look out, "The Pitt": You're not the only acclaimed TV show telling its story one day at a time anymore.
The Pitt freshens up the hospital genre by splicing the intensity of The Bear, the urgency of 24, and a bit of House’s medical mystery into a viewing experience that starts off slow, but keeps on running once it gets its legs.
Critics of the new episodes have said the approach does little more than “reheat The Pitt’s nachos,”…
This time, the series channels The Pitt and 24 by setting the entire season, except the finale, over the course of one day.
It’s challenging to depict the details of day-to-day labor in real time and keep it interesting, although it certainly can be done. The Pitt does this quite literally and very well.
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It was the most overtly liberal American TV since The West Wing, providing gritty urban realism as a cover for its multicultural American fantasia.
The Pitt now feels high on its own medicine, its earnest confidence and moral clarity increasingly recalling that of The West Wing.
…let’s not forget to recognize the excellent work of Patrick Ball as Gregory House-esque Dr. Frank Langdon…
The Pitt freshens up the hospital genre by splicing the intensity of The Bear, the urgency of 24, and a bit of House’s medical mystery into a viewing experience that starts off slow, but keeps on running once it gets its legs.
It’s Groundhog Day with stethoscopes, which is fitting given that Pittsburgh counts Punxsutawney Phil as a neighbor.
Abellera, who described the many takes of filming the aftermath of Louie’s death as “this weird Groundhog Day of awful,” hints at a similar exhaustion creeping up in Perlah as the shift continues.
Their father worked in the art department on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood — a Pittsburgh staple before it went big time — for 33 years. He helped to create the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, so it feels right for his time on this planet to end in a room as close to that as this hospital has.
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From racism and incel culture to America’s epidemic of gun violence, The Pitt Season 1 was The Wire-esque in its portrait of a country — and an emergency room — straining at the seams.
The Pitt frequently presents some of the best “action” on television, and it’s realistically gory in a way that its network/streaming peers like Game of Thrones and The Last of Us can only dream of.