“NY Med” debuted last night on ABC, and despite being up against the MLB All Star Game on Fox, it performed very well in the ratings. The show drew 5.41 million total viewers, and 2.1 million adults 25-54 at 10 PM , handily topping CBS and NBC. For comparison, the last series from producer Terry Wrong, “Boston Med,” debuted in June 2010 to 5.1 million viewers.
The reviews for the show have also been stellar:
Ken Tucker, for Entertainment Weekly:
I gulped down five episodes of NY Med in pretty much one sitting — I just had to keep going, to see what the surgeons and nurses at New York Presbyterian hospital were going to confront next.
David Zurawik, for The Baltimore Sun:
[W]ith “NY Med,” which premieres at 10 p.m. Tuesday, Wrong surpasses his earlier work in terms of prime-time storytelling without sacrificing any of the cultural seriousness or grand reach of the Hopkins series.
Matt Zoller Seitz, for Vulture:
This isn’t high-pressure storytelling. With a couple of stylistic exceptions — including novelistic cross-cutting that plays havoc with chronology, and some music cues that verge on Grey’s Anatomy–style cheese — Wrong’s series are laid-back and plainspoken. He seems to think that if he shows us recognizable people in situations we can relate to, we’ll be intrigued enough to keep watching. He’s right.
Mary McNamara, for The Los Angeles Times:
Enough recurring characters emerge to keep the show hooked to some consistency, but the mix of humor and pathos, of tragedy and triumph makes “NY Med” high-energy and emotionally affecting, a new species of show altogether.
David Hinckley, for The New York Daily News:
This eight-part exploration of New York Presbyterian Hospital feels like a documentary in the sense that it takes a serious approach to the ultimate serious subject: life and death.Toward that end, “NY Med” never gives the slightest whiff of manipulation. In contrast to most reality shows, nothing feels like it’s being initiated or massaged for the cameras.
Eric Deggans, for the Tampa Bay Times:
It is the best dose of “reality TV” in the world, tracking everything from well-known TV doctor Mehmet Oz — a renowned heart surgeon who stills performs one procedure a week at the hospital — to a trauma surgeon who came to the United States as an illegal immigrant; a pediatric surgeon who takes a tumor out of a 4-year-old’s heart; and a Gulf War veteran with HIV getting a heart transplant.
Gail Pennington, for the St Louis Dispatch:
“NY Med” isn’t always easy to watch. Chances are, it will make you cry even more often than it makes you laugh, but it will rarely bore you.