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Review: ABC's hospital docuseries 'Hopkins'

Verne Gay | Off Camera

June 26, 2008

Hopkins

Tonight at 10 on ABC/7

Reason to Watch: The sequel to the groundbreaking 2000 series by ABC News on Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University Hospital, "Hopkins 24/7."

What it's About: Think "Grey's Anatomy" meets "The Wire" meets real life. ABC News' Terence Wrong - a "longform" TV news specialist - and his production team shot 1,500 hours of raw footage inside (and out) of one the world's great hospitals to create a sprawling portrait of its surgeons, residents, nurses and patients.

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ABC says "over a hundred caregivers and patients" gave consent to be filmed, so no pixilated faces - just sharp close-ups, intimate asides and dramatic life-and-death moments. Tonight, we meet some of the "stars" - not the right word, but it'll have to do - of this six-parter, including cardiothoracic resident Brian Bethea, whose gargantuan workload has created a rift in his personal life, as he and wife, Amber, ponder separation; Ann Czarnik, ER resident/surgeon; Ashish Shah, a heart transplant specialist; and many more.

Tonight's episode revolves (in part) around transplant patient Earl Ingemann, a 19-year-old Bermudan who's been on a heart transplant list for longer than anyone seems able to remember. The episodes are stand-alones, but the doctors' personal story lines are a common thread.

Bottom line: The best unscripted show on commercial television this season, which you may correctly point out is faint praise; but in this case, it's not. Wrong is so skillful, has such a keen eye for personal and telling details, and has configured his Everest of footage into such a compulsively watchable series that mere kudos here don't begin to do it justice. Wrong has a lot of experience. His "24/7" series has tracked Boston politics, the NYPD and online dating, while 1994's "They Were Young and Brave," a "Day One" doc on the Vietnam battle of Ia Drang, is one of my all-time favorite news documentaries. So yeah, this is good - amazingly good.