The Pitt (…and the pendulum)

We dust off our magnifying glass and microscope for a forensic look into the viewing public’s eternal fascination with Docs and Cops…

According to David Thomson’s brilliant Difficult Men, Behind The Scenes of a Creative Revolution, Rob Sorcher and Christina Wayne, ‘had a rule, almost a mantra’ when they went looking for the AMC cable network’s first original scripted TV series: “No doctors, no cops and no lawyers.” 

They found what they were looking for in Mad Men, a project that had been rejected for eight years, in spite of being championed by David Chase, the writer/producer/director of The Sopranos.

Mad Men opened to immediate and almost universal acclaim, notwithstanding the of the absence of cops and docs, and a lot of the success was probably down to the other part of Sorcher and Wayne’s mantra, which Difficult Men also reveals:

ROB SORCHER: “I came up with this spiel. It was really just a wish list of what I wanted to see on TV. “We want to do high-end, one-hour dramas. We want them to feel more cinematic and told the way a novel is told -slow-paced, slow-burning and character driven.”

That ‘spiel’ was probably formulated back around 2005, I guess. Fifteen years later, and a cornucopia of brilliant ‘cinematic, slow-paced, slow-burning and character-driven’ drama later, our small(er) screens are still being monopolised by those perennial staples, Cops and Docs. 

For example, In 2019-2020, of the 69 scripted dramas on the big four US networks, 35 were law-enforcement based; on CBS roughly 70% of drama programming was cop-related, with ABC slating: ~38% cop,  ~15% medical and ~15% legal.          

That was obviously a bad year for scrubs and scalpel set. And there is some evidence to suggest that there’s a kind of ‘seasonality’ to the way the pendulum swings back and forth between the two genres.

Firstly, when viewed through the Social Lens:

‘It has been suggested that in periods of high crime anxiety, social disorder and terrorism, audiences often lean toward cop shows, procedurals, and surveillance narratives. For example, post-9/11 saw rises in shows like 24, CSI and NCIS which offered competence, intelligence, and state control fantasies.’  Along with COVID ‘apparently boosting engagement with older medical content like Grey's Anatomy and pandemic-related viewing,’ While even back in doughty Blighty… ‘UK interest in NHS-themed narratives increased amid debates over NHS strain, e.g. This Is Going to Hurt and Call the Midwife.’

And also through the Personal Lens:

Younger viewers apparently ‘often prefer crime thrillers, forensic procedurals and antihero cops because of their emphasis on sensation seeking, puzzle-solving and identity formation around rebellion/order, e.g. True Detective and Sherlock. (..No shit!). While mid-life viewers ‘tend to gravitate towards hospital dramas and workplace ensemble shows as caregiving looms larger and health anxiety increases’ (so the ‘greying’ tune into Gray’s Anatomy?). It has even been suggested that ‘older viewers’ may prefer “comfort procedurals” with their‘ predictable structure, lower cognitive load, and moral clarity.’ (Which at least explains why Bergerac has risen from the dead).

But who am I to talk.  I'm probably the only person on the planet to have watched every episode of Holby City, A Touch ofFrost, The Resident, Morse, The Pitt and Endeavour.  And don’t get me started on Dalziel And Pascoe or Bodies and Line of Duty (the latter two springing from the pen of the brilliant, genre-hopping former doctor Jed Mercurio).

As a paid-up (but underpaid!) representative of The Business of Pleasure, I understand only too well how negative emotions provide the yeast that raises our Daily Bread, but that doesn’t mean that I am any more immune to their tractor-beam-like pull.  Because I’m a Human first and a ‘Creative’ second, right? No? Okay, maybe it’s a tie for first place …on a good day.

Either way, negative emotions have a big part to play in how we perceive the entire panoply of the arts, not just entertainment, as one 2017 paper* theorises in its introduction:

‘Why are negative emotions so central in art reception far beyond tragedy? Revisiting classical aesthetics in the light of recent psychological research, we present a model to explain this much discussed (apparent) paradox. We argue that negative emotions are an important resource for the arts in general, rather than a special license for exceptional art forms only. The underlying rationale is that negative emotions have been shown to be particularly powerful in securing attention, intense emotional involvement, and high memorability, and hence is precisely what artworks strive for. Two groups of processing mechanisms are identified that conjointly adopt the particular powers of negative emotions for art’s purposes. The first group consists of psychological distancing mechanisms that are activated along with the cognitive schemata of art, representation and fiction. These schemata imply personal safety and control over containing or discontinuing exposure to artworks, thereby preventing negative emotions from becoming outright incompatible with expectations of enjoyment. This distancing sets the stage for a second group of processing components that allow art recipients to positively embrace the experience of negative emotions, thereby rendering art reception more intense, more interesting, more emotionally moving, more profound, and occasionally even more beautiful…’

I’ll leave the final words on the subject to someone who is even more adept at riding the Cop-Doc pendulum than the Mercurial Jed, the Canadian former lawyer David Shore (NYPD Blue, The Good Doctor and many more). Or at least to his most famous creation, Gregory House, the genius disease detective who was, in part, modelled on another addicted and super-addictive genius, Sherlock Holmes (‘House v. Holmes/”Home,” cocaine v. Vicodin, Watson v. Wilson):

“You want to know how two chemicals interact, do you ask them? No, they’re going to lie through their lying little chemical teeth. Throw them in a beaker and apply heat.”

DT 24 April, 2026

*The Distance-Embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception Winifred Menninghaus, Valentin Wagner, Julian Hanich, Eugen Wassiliiwizky, Thomas Jacobsen, Stefan Koelsch Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 2017