The real-life hospital mishaps that inspired ‘St. Denis Medical’

Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who’s looking to have their funny bone tickled.

Eric Ledgin, co-creator and showrunner of NBC’s new hospital comedy “St. Denis Medical,” shares the medical mishaps that have inspired the series so far in this week’s Guest Spot, plus recommendations for CBS’ legendary 1970s Saturday night lineup, Apple TV+’s irreverent “Dickinson” and more.

Happy reading, and happy new year!

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(Photo illustration by Jim Cooke/Los Angeles Times; Photos via Lucasfilm Ltd., Apple, HBO, Netflix, Britbox, Getty Images )

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Turn on

Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times

Hailee Steinfeld as the young 19th-century poet in “Dickinson.”

(Apple)

“Dickinson” (Apple TV+)

When Apple TV+ announced this week that the streaming service — usually $9.99 per month — would be free to all from Jan. 3-5, critics armchair and otherwise took to social media to share recommendations for what to binge: “Severance” and “Mythic Quest” for instance, returning for second seasons imminently, or “Silo” and “For All Mankind,” part of the platform’s burgeoning sci-fi stable. For my money, though, Apple TV+’s very first series remains its finest: Available at the service’s launch, “Dickinson,” Alena Smith’s rollicking revisionist history of the Belle of Amherst, is as bracing a teen comedy as any platform has produced in recent memory. Anchored by Hailee Steinfeld’s charmingly sly title performance, the series cleverly enmeshes Dickinson’s indelible poetry with everyday frustrations (parents, crushes), world-historical occasions (the Civil War) and thoroughly modern slang. It is sunny — but not vapid. Zippy — but not disposable. Risky — but not obscure. In other words, everything streaming promised to be. And still could. — Matt Brennan

Joe Burrow in “Hard Knocks: In Season With the AFC North.”

(AP/HBO)

‘Hard Knocks: In Season With the AFC North’ (HBO, Max)

With “In Season,” the venerable docuseries franchise has finally hit on the right formula. Following a division in season guarantees drama and the playoffs, and the AFC North — with the Baltimore Ravens, Pittsburgh Steelers, Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns — showcases bitter rivalries that make for good TV. As a Ravens die-hard, the saying “You’re not a Raven until you beat the Steelers” is real. I clapped with glee reliving the team’s December win. (Zay Flowers, you are finally a Raven!) I do begrudgingly admit that Steelers coach Mike Tomlin made me laugh, however, when he told the camera crew to “Wikipedia” Cleveland’s defensive end Myles Garrett, a generational talent, to see his accolades. And for a football fan, it’s fascinating to watch new Batmobile owner Joe Burrow in practice as the Bengals vie for the playoffs. However, one of the biggest story lines was MIA — the Ravens’ suspension and release of wide receiver Diontae Johnson after he refused to play. The glaring omission is a reminder that the peek behind the NFL shield is only what they want you to see. — Vanessa Franko

Catch up

Everything you need to know about the film or TV series everyone’s talking about

Bob Newhart.

(Catchy Comedy)

You may remember, or perhaps you have heard from your parents or grandparents as you cycle through a dozen streaming services and find nothing you want to watch, that in the long time before cable or streaming or home video or anything “on demand,” all TV was appointment TV. (What they call linear television now, but then was just “television.”) You needed to be in front of the set when your show was on, or wait until summer when reruns began. Yes, those were more challenging, exciting times.

Now, to return you to those thrilling days of yesteryear, something called Catchy Comedy — a “national broadcast TV network” that can found locally on Spectrum cable, Philo streaming and over the air from KTTV 11.4 — has re-created the 1973-74 CBS Saturday night lineup, a murderers’ row of comedies those who remember recall with a nostalgic sigh and smile: “All in the Family,” “MASH,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and “The Carol Burnett Show” in nightly broadcast order. These shows have been variously available over the years, as terrestrial and basic cable reruns and on home video, but the point here is to capture the frisson of watching them together, in order, on the very night they issued into the world.

The programming block, which begins Saturday and continues for indefinite Saturdays thereafter, will not gather the same episodes you would have seen on the same night, but is going back to the beginning with the sitcoms, airing their first episodes — that means “MASH” with Wayne Rogers and McLean Stevenson, not Mike Farrell and Harry Morgan — while the “Carol Burnett” episode comes from a decade-appropriate 1970. Time travel is an imperfect art.

Note: Though East Coast airings begin properly at 8 p.m., here in PT the fun starts at 5 p.m. At least you won’t have to ask Mom and/or Dad to let you stay up late. Check catchycomedy.com for details. — Robert Lloyd

Guest spot

A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching

David Alan Grier in “St. Denis Medical.”

(Ron Batzdorff/NBC)

Fresh off a holiday season spent extensively with the 0-to-5-year-old set, I’m acutely aware that a little dry humor goes a long way in the time of coughs and colds. (When you have to pay a kid a nickel to get him to blow his nose instead of sniffling for the one-thousandth time, you really do have to laugh.) It’s a lesson that “St. Denis Medical” (NBC, Peacock) has learned well. The comedy series, starring Wendi McLendon-Covey and David Alan Grier among an ensemble cast, finds plenty of absurd humor in medical and administrative mishaps — aided, co-creator and showrunner Eric Ledgin explains, by the lower intensity of its small-town setting and the occasional real-life experience. Ahead of the series’ Jan. 14 midseason premiere, Ledgin stopped by Screen Gab to share anecdotes that inspired “St. Denis Medical,” what he’s watching and more. — Matt Brennan

What have you watched recently that you’re recommending to everyone you know?

For weeks I’ve been pushing the spy thriller “The Agency” [Paramount+] on people. It stars Michael Fassbender and Jeffrey Wright, and is tonally captivating, extremely well-written and beautifully shot. A lot of people are saying it’s this year’s best new show right after “St. Denis Medical.” It’s mostly people in my family who are saying that, but still — that’s a lot of people.

What’s your go-to “comfort watch,” the film or TV show you return to again and again?

If I want a true comfort watch, it’s usually the movie “Rudy” [VOD, multiple platforms.] It’s weird to call something comforting when it’s made you sob audibly dozens of times in your life, but there’s something about the feel and even the score of that movie that just pulls me in immediately, and doesn’t let go until the last frame.

My young kids recently watched “Cool Runnings” [Disney+], which, side note, HOLDS UP, so I decided to double down on another underdog sports story and show them “Rudy.” I forgot about the part where Rudy’s best friend dies horribly early on in the story, but we sort of moved past that, and the kids ended up on the edge of their seats, rooting for this guy to get an acceptance letter to Notre Dame, which is just hilarious to me.

Whether comedy or drama, medical shows tend to be set in big-city hospitals — not a small town like Merrick, Ore. What was particularly interesting to you about mining the particular challenges facing this kind of institution?

Because “St. Denis Medical” takes place in an Emergency Department, the intensity of a big city hospital made less sense to me. I went to a rural hospital once with a friend who hurt his butt cheek trying to jump a ravine, and it was a hilarious experience. But in a Manhattan ER, I saw someone covered in blood from an underground fight club. It was cool, but it wasn’t funny. Smaller hospitals can feel more like a community, where you might treat a neighbor or family member. And because they have less employees, people can be forced to wear multiple hats. All of this felt like more fertile ground for this show.

One would imagine that your own experiences have loosely inspired at least one scenario on the show. Can you talk about how that experience informed “St. Denis Medical” and what you had to change to make it funny?

Halfway through the season (maybe due to stress?), I got a staph infection that caused a painful abscess ON MY FACE. I ended up in the hospital for days, and the entire time I was texting a doctor friend for advice, then trying to gently suggest her ideas to my ER doctors. Ultimately we created a patient character (played by Anoop Desai) who keeps using Google and WebMD to diagnose himself, annoying Dr. Ron (David Alan Grier). I realized as we wrote it how much my control issues were about fear of pain, and it ended up being one of my favorite story lines of the year.