The Pitt is not only the biggest medical drama on HBO, but the biggest medical drama on TV at the moment. Audiences everywhere love the interlocking storylines, the unique structure in which every episode runs an hour during a shift at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, the characters, the high-stakes drama, and the connections to older series like ER.
But The Pitt isn’t the first medical show HBO has produced, nor is it even necessarily the best.
Getting On is a forgotten HBO gem
The cast is incredible
Getting On is a medical sitcom that ran for three seasons on HBO between 2013 and 2015. It stars Laurie Metcalf (Roseanne, The Big Bang Theory, Toy Story) as Dr. Jenna James, the self-absorbed director of medicine at the neglected geriatrics wing of a badly managed hospital in Long Beach, California. Alex Borstein (Family Guy, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) is head nurse Dawn, a perpetual sad sack who has trouble leaving her personal problems at home. Niecy Nash (Reno 911!) is the empathetic nurse Didi, and Mel Rodriguez is the emotional supervising nurse Patsy De La Serda.
This is an illustrious cast. Between the three of them, Metcalf, Borstein, and Nash have won eight Emmys, and putting them all in a room together seems somehow unfair to other TV shows. It’s hard to take your eyes off Metcalf, whose face can go from rage to elation to chagrin in a few seconds. Dr. James means well, but lacks the social skills to know how offensive she can be to everyone around her, which is a comedy goldmine. Meanwhile, Dawn is a mess, but Borstein keeps her from becoming cartoonish. It’s a fantastic little ensemble.
Getting On is billed as a sitcom, but it’s the kind of sitcom you might expect to find on HBO, which means there’s also a lot of heart, sadness, and melancholy to go along with the pitch-black humor. After all, it’s set in a hospital wing mainly occupied by people on the verge of death, which is as funny as it is tragic.
Getting On may be even more realistic than The Pitt
Because real life is funny
The Pitt has a reputation as a realistic medical show, and it employs several doctors as in-show consultants. It even has a couple on the writing staff. The focus is on the drama, with the characters regularly dealing with life-or-death situations.
You might not think a show focused more on comedy would be as realistic, but you’d be wrong. Getting On is a remake of a British show of the same name; that show was written by and starred Jo Brand, who was a psychiatric nurse for 10 years. In nursing subreddits, many professionals have singled out Getting On as the show that best captures what it really feels like to work in the medical field.
We can even compare and contrast. Early in the first season of The Pitt, Dr. Heather Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) is trying to figure out what language one of her patients speaks. She has the patient point to her home country on a map, and determines that she’s from Nepal. It’s a nice moment of connection.
On Getting On, a similar situation is much messier. Dawn and Didi are trying to figure out which language a patient speaks and finally manage to get a translator on a landline. They can’t move the phone closer, so Dawn tries to relay what the patient is saying to Didi, who then relays it to the translator. Of course, that doesn’t work, so eventually Didi just holds up the phone in the hope the translator will overhear what the patient is saying. “He says she says, ‘I can’t stand this. I wish I was dead. Please kill me,” Didi finally reveals. “She’s Cambodian.”
Getting On is funny, messy, and moving
Not always in that order
The Pitt is set in a frantic emergency room, but life on the geriatric ward from Getting On can be dull and dispiriting. The show mines those vibes for all they’re worth, and ends up feeling very true to life.
Mind you, while Getting On is out to make you laugh, the subject matter isn’t for the faint of heart. People at the end of their lives often secrete all kinds of unsavory bodily fluids, and the show doesn’t shy away from confronting the messy parts of sickness. Getting On also confronts the difficulties of hospital administration, like in an ongoing storyline from the second season involving a plot to enroll patients in a for-profit hospice program. Like The Pitt, Getting On examines how the imperative to save lives sometimes conflicts with a hospital’s need to make money. That’s a topic as relevant today as it was when Getting On first aired in the mid-2010s.
Stream all three seasons of Getting On on HBO Max
But as dark as the show can get, Getting On also allows its characters dignity and warmth. Aging might be hell, but the elderly people on the show are allowed to crack jokes and find joy. As much as the series is about death, it’s weirdly life-affirming.
All in all, Getting On is definitely one of the great under-sung HBO shows, and one of several excellent medical dramas you can watch while you wait for the next season of The Pitt.
- Release Date
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2013 – 2015-00-00
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Laurie Metcalf
Dr. Jenna James
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Alex Borstein
Dawn Forchette
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Mel Rodriguez
Patsy De La Serda
