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If there’s been a show that’s been quietly but doggedly dragging our attention more and more every single week recently, it’s Max’s The Pitt — a medical drama set in real time across one shift in an emergency room of a fictional hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Concentrating as much as anything on the emotional (and physical!) costs of working in such a constantly charged, dangerous environment, it feels like a smart and necessary update on the medical drama that has some pretty noticeable callbacks to what came before, which leaves you on the edge of your seat after every hour. Which made us think… hey. Why not fill what feels like an exceptionally long week’s wait between episodes by looking back at those shows that did come before? Friends, for your consideration: three of the best medical shows TV has ever offered.

This is For Your Consideration, in which we try to come to terms with the inescapable fact that, honestly, there’s too much out there to have time to watch, read, or hear everything — by making some suggestions about things that you might have overlooked but would enjoy, anyway. Think of it as recommendations from a well-meaning friend.

ER: The Pitt before The Pitt, but don’t say it too loudly for legal reasons

Sharing a significant number of behind-the-scenes talent (including series creator R. Scott Gemmell, a host of the writing staff, and executive producer John Wells) and star Noah Wyle with The Pitt, it’s no wonder that the new series has been seen by many to be an update on the ER format — to the point where there’s even a lawsuit about it. Don’t let that keep you from revisiting what was one of the biggest TV shows of the late '90s and early '00s: a medical drama that wasn’t afraid to be ambitious, sweat the small stuff, and do whatever it took to make the audience feel something at any given moment, whether it was bringing Quentin Tarantino on as a guest director, killing off multiple beloved characters (the series did last 15 seasons, so it’s not like they didn’t have plenty of opportunities), or simply give the world George Clooney in his breakout role as the charming rogue Dr. Doug Ross. Less frenetic than The Pitt, this nonetheless felt like a revolution when it debuted on NBC in 1994, and it remains a show without which, we’d never have had something like Gray’s Anatomy. Take that as a blessing or a curse as you see fit.

Available on: Max

St. Elsewhere is worth remembering for more than just its final moments

Curiously underrated when compared to the contemporaneous Hill Street Blues — both groundbreaking procedurals based around emergency services and those working with them, featuring impossibly large casts filled with future stars — most people these days think of St. Elsewhere as the show that ended its run by declaring everything that had preceded was just the dream of an autistic kid. (It’s not that straightforward… but it’s also not that much more complicated, either.) It’s a shame, because throughout its six year run, St. Elsewhere has repeatedly proven itself to be a show focused on showing the humanity behind patients and doctors alike, and unafraid in taking creative risks to get to where it wanted to go. Come for the chance to see a cast that includes a very young Howie Mandel, Ed Begley Jr. and Denzel Washington (yes, really), stay for the digs at the American healthcare system back in the 1980s and find yourself wishing things were still just that bad.

Available on: Hulu 

M*A*S*H* started as a comedy, but it was always a drama hidden right there in plain sight

Adapted from a movie that was, itself, adapted from a novel, the TV series M*A*S*H should, by rights, have been running out of creative gas by the time it showed up on CBS in 1972; instead, it was a evolution into a final form that allowed the concept to fully explore every single bit of the tragic-comic potential behind the Korean War mobile army surgical hospital concept at the core of the idea way back when. It helps that the cast is stacked with all-timers like Alan Alda, Loretta Swift, Larry Linville, and McLean Stevenson, but throughout the eleven year run of the show — the Korean War itself only lasted three — the true star was the writing, which found ways to mine serious veins even as it reliably fulfilled the demands of the sitcom format of the ‘70s. Moving, hilarious, and unerringly kind even when roasting whichever character stepped into the line of metaphorical fire at any given moment, M*A*S*H remains an all-time classic. No surprise that its finale is still the most-watched episode of any scripted television show in U.S. history more than 40 years later.

Available on: Hulu

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