The sophomore blues

2025-26 TV Overview! Last year’s wave of physician-centric new Hollywood shows returns 

Sophomore TV dramas Doc (Fox), Watson (CBS), and Brilliant Minds (NBC) all look set to continue telling audiences that nurses are low-skilled physician helpers. Even the nurses on The Pitt (HBO), who have more substance, seem to be there to serve the physicians who dominate the show. The mockumentary St. Denis Medical (NBC) at least has a rough nurse-physician parity in terms of numbers and general silliness. In any case, good portrayals of nursing will return, on Call the Midwife (BBC/PBS) and Virgin River (Netflix).

November 2025 – Last year marked the start of a new era for health-related prime-time U.S. television. There were many new shows, and most will return. Unfortunately, the nurse characters on those shows are almost entirely marginal.

The big story last season was The Pitt (2nd season premiering January 2026), the popular and acclaimed HBO show. But its nurses were assistive and peripheral, with only a veteran charge nurse standing out among about 10 more important physician characters, and even then, mostly as just the bantering aide-de-camp of the lead physician. Meanwhile, the physicians did a lot of nursing. On NBC’s mockumentary St. Denis Medical (Nov. 3), the central character is a skilled, beleaguered senior nurse. But the overall focus on shenanigans doesn’t do much for nursing, and some plotlines have presented nurses as helpless in the face of real care challenges.

The rest of the new-ish shows reflect traditional Hollywood narratives, especially that of the physician as difficult-but-essential-genius-leader. In Fox’s Doc (Sept. 23), a difficult but brilliant senior physician works to rebuild her life after losing her recent memory. In its first season, a couple minor nurse characters did emerge, but they were low-skilled subordinates, and one spent much of the season in a classic battleaxe mode, as a sniping bureaucrat.

In NBC’s Brilliant Minds (Sept. 22), a difficult but brilliant neurologist leads a team of residents on diagnostic adventures. In the first season there basically were no nurse characters, apart from petty bureaucrats who occasionally got in the neurologist’s way; we gather a recurring minor nurse character will appear this season.

CBS’s Watson (Oct. 13) is a spin on the Sherlock Holmes narrative with the famous sleuth’s usual sidekick as a prickly but brilliant diagnostician in current-day Pittsburgh, where he bullies his team of brilliant assistant physicians into solving health mysteries. Nurses don’t really exist so far.

Despite all that, good portrayals of nursing will appear on long-running returning shows. Call the Midwife (BBC/PBS; early 2026) will be back for a 15th season about the work of skilled, autonomous nurse-midwives in London, now in 1971. It remains the best show for nursing on U.S. television.

Netflix’s Virgin River (late 2025 / early 2026), whose lead character is a highly competent nurse practitioner in a small California town, will return for a seventh season.

Other returning shows include NBC’s Chicago Med (Oct. 1), back for an 11th season. It also focuses on physicians, but it has still had two major nurse characters with real skill and authority. Unfortunately, one of those characters, a charge nurse, will not return as a regular character.

Netflix’s Home for Christmas (December) will be back for a third season, after a five-year hiatus. Set in Norway, the show focuses on a nurse character’s romantic life, but in the new season, she will apparently take on a “leadership role” at her hospital. And ABC’s seemingly endless Grey’s Anatomy (Oct. 9) will continue to offer a vision of hospital care in which physicians do everything that matters, while nurses are at best peripheral subordinates. Please join us in encouraging Hollywood to offer more accurate portrayals of nursing!

FYI, shows that ended last season: Doctor Odyssey (ABC), Transplant (NBC), Pulse (Netflix).

New Shows

Apparently none! It always possible something will appear that we are not yet aware of.

Returning Shows

Call the Midwife (BBC/PBS; early 2026) 

Virgin River (Netflix; late 2025 / early 2026)

St. Denis Medical (NBC; Nov. 3)

Home for Christmas (Netflix; December)

Chicago Med (NBC; Oct. 1)

The Pitt (HBO; January 2026)

Doc (Fox; Sept. 23)

Brilliant Minds (NBC; Sept. 22)

Watson (CBS; Oct. 13)

Grey’s Anatomy (ABC; Oct. 9)

Returning Shows

Call the Midwife (BBC/PBS; early 2026) 

The best current prime-time show for nursing will return for a 15th season in early 2026, after the usual Christmas special. Call the Midwife portrays about 10 nurse-midwife characters who are based at London’s Nonnatus House, providing holistic care to a working-class community, now in 1971. The nurses, a mix of nuns and non-nuns, are autonomous professionals who help pregnant women and others overcome a host of health, social, and economic challenges, including through strong advocacy in the clinical setting and more broadly. In season 14, the show continued to highlight the expertise of the senior midwives in a teaching context, this time with the promising new midwife Sister Catherine. Episode 2 featured excellent technical and psychosocial care by veteran midwife Trixie for a pregnant woman with bipolar disorder. The third episode highlighted Trixie’s formidable skill as a health advocate, as she persuaded the condescending, all-male board of health to continue funding Nonnatus House. Episode 5 portrayed Nonnatus leader Sister Julienne’s tenacious care for a poor pregnant mother trying to escape an abusive relationship, including a masterful handling of the woman’s difficult birth. And episodes 6 and 7 showed the gifted young midwife Joyce persevering despite facing virulent racism from a patient. Season 15 will reportedly reflect the women’s liberation movement and feature a mission to Hong Kong. The show has occasionally over-credited physicians, but the main impression it leaves is of nursing authority and life-saving skill. 

See our webpage featuring analyses of previous seasons, or the show’s website on PBS, where you can find episodes.

You can reach the show at +44-207-240-8890 or post@nealstreetproductions.com.

Virgin River (Netflix; late 2025 / early 2026) 

The central character on this drama, returning for a seventh season, is rural California nurse practitioner Mel Monroe. The show is mostly about romance and personal intrigue, and so there have never been many substantial clinical plotlines. Still, Mel has regularly shown advanced skills, managing issues including emergency care, prenatal care, and her physician colleague Doc’s initially regressive views of nursing. The sixth season did not have a lot clinical care, as the focus was on Mel’s upcoming wedding. But in the first couple episodes Mel did provide very good care for her father’s heart condition, including a cardioversion and some follow-up lifestyle change advocacy that seemed to have a positive effect. And episode 7 showed Mel and Doc competently handling a multi-victim rock slide incident. Throughout, Mel provided adept psychosocial support for the community as it faced various challenges.

For more information see our review of season 1 and the show’s website.

You can reach the show at 1-818-880-8442 or romaroth@myreelworld.com 5427 Villawood Circle; Calabasas, CA 91302 USA.

St. Denis Medical (NBC; Nov. 3)

This mockumentary sitcom about an underfunded hospital ED in Oregon looked promising, with half of its main characters being nurses, but so far it has not lived up to its potential. The central character is Alex, who has recently become a “supervising nurse.” She is skilled, idealistic, and conscientious to a self-destructive degree. Alex also serves as a trusted aide-de-camp of the “executive director” of the hospital, the physician Joyce. The other main nurse characters are Serena, a savvy veteran with the ability to put physicians in their place, if not much apparent concern for patients, and Matt, a well-meaning new nurse whose ineptitude seems to go beyond mere inexperience and at times suggests that a total idiot can be a registered nurse. The show even had a fourth nurse character, Val, whose main role seemed to be to suffer from the incompetence of those around her. Beyond the executive director, the physician characters were the cynical veteran ED physician Ron, who served as Alex’s friend, ally, and sparring partner, and the bogus, egotistical surgeon Bruce, the object of constant mockery. Having so many nurse characters does at least indicate how central nurses are to hospital care. And including two competent ones should present some chances to show nursing skill, but unfortunately there was not much of that in the first season. Early episodes included Alex providing good care to a patient suffering from addiction and taking the lead in a life-saving code. On the other hand, the main clinical plotline of the ninth episode was pretty damaging, even allowing for the sitcom context. Focusing on a dying man with a DNR who was surrounded by family who did nothing bicker, the episode left the unavoidable impression that nurses simply wait uncomfortably for such a patient to die – with no end-of-life care, no psychosocial care for the family, and no apparent clue what to do.  

See the show’s website.

The Pitt (HBO; January 2026)

This mid-season show, the surprise hit of last season, offered a more hard-edged and focused version of its parent show ER, with almost the entire 15-episode season playing out in an overwhelmed Pittsburgh emergency department (ED). As on ER, physicians dominated, with only one of the 10 major characters being a nurse. That was Dana Evans, a veteran charge nurse whose main role seemed to be to assist and banter with the lead attending physician Michael “Robby” Rabinavitch. Although Evans was very competent and knowledgeable about the massive flow of emergency patients, she rarely interacted with the nurses she was supposedly managing. There was a little of the standard Hollywood lip service from Robby about how important nurses are. But what viewers actually saw week after week was overwhelmingly physician care, and physician characters providing nursing care, especially advocacy and psychosocial care. There were minor nurse characters, and at times they displayed some expertise. But their usual roles were to serve the physicians by (1) assisting in codes, calling vital signs, and fetching and handing physicians things; (2) telling physicians that someone had arrived to see them, such as a patient’s family member, so in that sense they functioned like human text messages; and (3) acting as a kind of Greek chorus, commenting on the physician action that really mattered. None of those roles involved autonomous, nurse-directed care, and none involved any substantial relations with the patients. The show rightly received credit for making a serious effort to raise issues facing U.S. health care today, including, at the most basic level, the nation’s failure to devote the resources required for it. But what nursing got was mostly tokenism. For example, the show suggested the main cause of the U.S. nursing shortage was low pay, rather than understaffing.

You can reach the show at 779-706-1927 or johnwellsprods@gmail.com.

Doc (Fox; Sept. 23)

This drama focuses on a brilliant, senior internal medicine physician who has lost the memory of the last eight years of her life as the result of a brain injury. Even beyond recovering her professional status, she must come to terms with how her pre-injury self had alienated her family and colleagues, in a long redemption narrative. In the first season, the show’s seven main characters were all physicians, and many clinical scenes including no nurses but a significant amount of physician nursing. Physicians did all the patient monitoring, advocacy, and psychosocial care. Eventually a couple minor nurse characters emerged from the background, but they largely fulfilled stereotypes. One in particular spent much of the season as a typical modern battleaxe, an obstructive bureaucrat named Julie whose only apparent job was to serve the physicians (disagreeably) and who seemed to have no duty to or interest in the actual patients. The other character, a more junior nurse, was much more sympathetic, but she was also an easily intimidated lackey. These nurses played a bigger role as the season went on, and Julie evolved into something more than a battleaxe, occasionally displaying more positive qualities. But the nurses were still just assistants, with limited skills and zero autonomy, reporting to physicians and relying on them for all meaningful direction in the clinical setting. It’s hard to be optimistic about the second season.

See the wiki page on Doc. We are unable to find contact info for this show.

Brilliant Minds (NBC; Sept. 22)

This show’s brilliant lead character Oliver Wolf, inspired by pioneering neurologist Oliver Sacks, solves medical mysteries with the help of a team of interns, while also facing off against several senior physician colleagues, very much in the House mold. In the first season there were no significant recurring nurse characters, and so as expected the physicians did a lot of nursing, especially monitoring, advocacy, and psychosocial care. Nurses rarely appeared, but when they did, they tended to be either obstructive bureaucrats who failed to understand Wolf’s holistic vision, a feature of early episodes, or else low-skilled assistants with little to offer. There is a glimmer of hope that the show might be a little less damaging in the second season. TV Guide reports [in the Sept. 8-28, 2025 issue] that we will soon see a new recurring minor character named “Scotty Silva, described by [showrunner Michael] Grassi as ‘the best nurse at Bronx General [who is] put on the neuro floor to help whip the place into shape.’” The NBC site says that “Nico Silva” is a “charming” and “charismatic” nurse who “runs the hospital” and is known as “the Mayor of Bronx General.” Who knows what all that really means, but it’s very possible that the character will display skills and even a measure of autonomy.

See the show’s website on NBC. You can reach the show at 1-818-954-1711 or info@72st.co or 4000 Warner Blvd Bldg. 146 Ste 204/205 Burbank, CA 91522.

Watson (CBS; Oct. 13)

In this spin on the Sherlock Holmes story, the usual sidekick Watson is himself a brilliant solver of mysteries, almost like a composite of the original Holmes and Watson characters. Specifically, this Watson is a current-day physician who bullies, cajoles, and inspires a team of physicians in diagnosing rare conditions at a high-tech Pittsburgh clinic, again very much in the mode of the highly influential House. The backstory is that Watson spent time in Europe working with some version of Holmes, but some months earlier, Holmes went over those Swiss falls with his enemy Moriarty and he is now presumed dead. So Watson returned to Pittsburgh and set up a clinic to diagnose rare diseases, apparently with a large sum of money that Holmes left him for that purpose. At the clinic, Watson leads edgy diagnostic debates with his elite, competitive physician team. This all feeds the unhelpful House delusion that what really matters in health care is brilliant physicians trying to outwit each other in diagnosing extremely rare conditions, a popular Hollywood physician-glorification narrative that seems increasingly untenable as A.I. appears to be developing the ability to diagnose better than humans. But in this environment, patients are almost irrelevant, and nurses barely exist. Six of the seven major Watson characters are physicians, and there are no nurses. A few nameless apparent nurses do appear, either being assistive in the background or occasionally in the foreground. They may nod at the arriving Watson, or say things like “Understood, Dr. Watson,” or weakly explain that a surgeon has been delayed by bridge closures but should arrive soon to save the day. Thus, the show has reinforced the traditional Hollywood notion that nurses are largely irrelevant to serious health care.

Write to the producers at jweber@take5productions.ca.

Chicago Med (NBC; Oct. 1)

This Dick Wolf drama, returning for an eleventh season, is mainly about a half dozen emergency physicians, and they direct most of the care we see. But up until now it has always had at least two major nurse characters. In recent years they have been the authoritative ED charge nurse Maggie Lockwood, and the strong hospital executive Sharon Goodwin, who is a nurse. These nurses at times played critical, authoritative roles in care. In the tenth season, Goodwin helped guide the staff through countless challenges, even as she was slowly recovering from a brutal attack that resulted from a difficult decision she had made about where to direct limited hospital resources. Meanwhile, Lockwood advocated for patients and at times fellow nurses, as in episode 12, where minor nurse character Doris made a medication error basically caused by understaffing. Lockwood fought to save her job and get better staffing. Unfortunately, the actress who plays Lockwood left the show after the tenth season and there is no sign yet of a replacement character. A competent nurse with major-character potential, Jackie Nelson, did appear in about a third of the tenth season episodes. But she left the show abruptly after her unresolved romantic tension with one of the physicians was finally resolved, in a fairly bitter way. As for the minor nurse characters like Doris, they tend to operate mainly as competent assistants, absorbing physician commands. At times the show also slips into unhelpful cliches, as the nurses may push a family member out of the room to give “the doctors space to work”; evidently the nurses don’t need space.

For more information see our page on Chicago Med or the NBC website.

You can contact the show at +1-818-777-3131 or contact@wolfentertainment.com or 100 Universal City Plaza Bldg. 2252 Universal City, CA 91608 USA

Home for Christmas (Netflix; December)

This Norwegian sitcom, which aired its first two seasons in 2019 and 2020, focuses on 30-year-old Oslo nurse Johanne. At the show’s start, Johanne had been getting pressure to find a mate like everyone else already, and she unwisely promised to bring one home to meet her family at Christmas, leading to comic misadventures. As a nurse at a local hospital, Johanne was competent and caring, earning the respect of patients and colleagues with her advanced psychosocial and technical care. In the first season she made a real difference for an elderly patient with COPD and a young patient addicted to heroin. She also advocated strongly for and to patients, for example with a wealthy politician who had supported cuts to health care financing. At times her romantic life did distract her to the extent that her manager scolded her — but at least that was her nursing manager, and the show gets points for not suggesting that she reported to a physician. Romantic exploits also pulled the show away from the clinical setting, especially in the second season, limiting its ability to help nursing. In any case, after a five year hiatus, the show is back for a third season, with press reports indicating that we will find Johanne at 35, single again, “keeping busy with family and work, taking on a new leadership position at work, and finally throw[ing] herself back into the dating scene.” We hope to see at least some further indications of nursing expertise and autonomy (“leadership position”!) on a show that will surely once again be mostly about romance.

Write to the producers at anders@viafilm.no.

Grey’s Anatomy (ABC; Oct. 9)

Back for a 22nd season, and well past the point where it became the most damaging show for nursing in Hollywood history, this prime time TV institution will again show more than a dozen surgeons providing all of the hospital care that matters, while nurses are generally clueless handmaidens or battleaxes, on the rare occasions when they appear at all. Actually, as we have noted in the past, the veteran OR nurse BokHee does appear briefly in many episodes, but she almost never speaks. In season 21, nameless nurse characters surfaced occasionally for brief moments, as assistants with limited skills, waiting for physicians to tell them what to do, or as bureaucrats presenting dramatic obstacles for the young surgeons, another classic Grey’s mode, for example in episode 2 berating one surgeon for not re-doing a wound dressing after examining it, and in episode 6 telling a different one to wait for an attending rather than saving a crashing patient.

For more information see our Grey’s Anatomy page with analyses over the years or the show’s website on ABC.

You can contact the show at business@shondaland.com, Grey’s Anatomy, 1905 N. Wilcox Avenue, #307, Los Angeles, CA 90068.

Conclusion

The physician-centric narrative of most U.S. hospital shows is exemplified by dramas like Doc, Watson, Brilliant Minds, and Grey’s Anatomy, on which nurses tend to be handmaidens, at best. In fairness, some shows, like Chicago Med, have at least offered substantial examples of nursing skill, advocacy, and even autonomy. But only Call the Midwife and Virgin River can be expected to offer a consistently good portrayal of nursing. Please join us in encouraging better ones!

Take Action!

With all these shows, we need your help! Please call or write to the shows to give them your feedback with the contact information we provided at the end of our analysis of each show. Please also consult our Take Action page for ideas. Also, since we cannot monitor the world’s media by ourselves, please watch one or more of the shows with a nursing element and let us know if you see a good or bad portrayal at info@truthaboutnursing.org. If we all work on a piece of the puzzle, we can build a society that understands the true worth of nursing, helping to strengthen the profession so nurses can deliver better patient care.