SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Despite the challenges Hollywood has faced in recent years - reduced production, strikes, slashed budgets - there is a lot of new TV coming out this month. We've got some medical dramas, cop shows, a Western, even a "Star Trek" movie. If it sounds like everything old is new again, that is exactly what our TV critic Eric Deggans saw when he saw this list. He's on now to talk about it. Hey, Eric.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: Hi.
DETROW: So let's start. Let's start with the medical dramas.
DEGGANS: So we've got this show called "Doc" that's on Fox. And if you've seen the film "Regarding Henry," where Harrison Ford plays this jerky lawyer who turns into a nice guy after he gets a brain injury, this Fox drama has a very similar feel. Molly Parker plays a callous doctor who gets a brain injury in a car accident and forgets the last eight years of her life, and it's based on an Italian TV drama. Let's listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DOC")
MOLLY PARKER: (As Amy Elias) I don't know what I did or who I am. But I wanted to be a doctor my entire life, and I don't think I can give that up.
DEGGANS: I know, very dramatic.
DETROW: Yeah.
DEGGANS: And there's also "The Pitt." Now, this drama on Max stars Noah Wyle as a doctor running an emergency room in a bustling hospital in Pittsburgh. Now, you might remember Wyle from the classic medical drama "ER." But for "The Pitt," this show is in real time, 15 episodes showing 15 hours in a grueling shift. And even though it has Wyle and former ER executive producer John Wells working on it, it feels very different from "ER." The only thing that disappointed me as somebody who lived and worked in Pittsburgh in the 1990s, they didn't have the Yinzer accent. (Imitating Yinzer accent) Yen's going dahntahn and dat (ph).
They didn't do it.
DETROW: That's tough to pull off. They didn't even try?
DEGGANS: Not that I saw...
DETROW: All right.
DEGGANS: ...And I watched 10 episodes of it, so (laughter)...
DETROW: OK. OK, well, that being said, let's shift genres - an even more classic genre, the Western. I've seen a lot of press for a new show called "American Primeval." What's going on with that?
DEGGANS: So this comes to Netflix from Peter Berg, who directed and cowrote the script for the film "Friday Night Lights," and Mark L. Smith, who wrote the script for "Twisters" and cowrote the script for "The Revenant." And like "The Revenant," this is a gritty story about the American frontier. This time it's set in 1857 Utah, where white settlers from the East are clashing with Mormons who are trying to build a sanctuary there, and Native American tribes are kind of stuck in the middle. I mean, it is bloody, visceral and explicit. But it also jettisons a lot of this romanticism that we have about white Americans coming to the West that we've seen in other Western stories.
DETROW: All right, I want to ask you now about the show I am personally most excited about, and that is "Severance"...
DEGGANS: A lot of people are.
DETROW: ...Apple TV+ - such a good show. It's been several years since it left us with one of the most amazing cliff-hangers I think I have ever seen in television. Remind us of what we need to know going into "Severance" Season 2.
DEGGANS: Well, you know, I feel like we could do a whole segment just on this show.
DETROW: Yeah.
DEGGANS: But "Severance" debuted on Apple TV+ way back in 2022, and it was centered on these people who worked in an office where their memories were severed between work and home. So at home, they don't remember work and vice versa. And towards the end of the first season, we realized that meant there were two different people living in one body, with one only remembering what it's like to live in a windowless office working like hamsters on tasks, which didn't seem to have any meaning. So as the second season begins, we see fallout from the people inside - they're called innies - attempting to find out about their lives outside the company. That happened in the last episode of the last season. Now, I got a pro tip for everybody - you really should watch at least that last episode from the first season, just so you get caught up on where all the characters are and what the issues are at hand, because once the second season starts, they don't do a lot to catch you up. You may want to watch the whole first season because you really have to understand where these characters are to understand where they start in the second season.
DETROW: All right. And let's end with something even more sci-fi than that, and that is "Star Trek." We have a new movie...
DEGGANS: That's right.
DETROW: ...Called "Star Trek: Section 31." Do folks need to be Trekkies to enjoy that?
DEGGANS: Well, it might help. So "Trek" was built on this idea of a future where humanity had transcended racism, prejudice, greed. They don't even have money. Star Michelle Yeoh on "Section 31" plays a refugee from a mirror universe, which "Trek" fans will remember is this alternate universe where characters like Kirk and Spock were all evil, and they serve this totalitarian empire. So Yeoh's character in the "Section 31" movie is in the regular "Trek" universe and winds up joining this black ops unit called Section 31 to help stop an incursion from the old universe. It's an interesting idea because how does a black ops unit even exist in the perfect world of "Trek," right? I kind of wish the movie, which is super jam-packed with stuff, spent a little more time on this idea. It was initially announced by Paramount+ as a series a long time ago. But after Yeoh won an Oscar in 2023, I mean, it kind of makes sense that probably the best they could do was get her to participate in a movie.
DETROW: Right.
DEGGANS: So it's shorter, and it has a lot of stuff packed into it.
DETROW: Seems like it's no "Wrath of Khan."
DEGGANS: (Laughter) No, not - you don't get the, you know, (imitating William Shatner) Khan.
You know, you don't get that Captain James T. Kirk moment.
DETROW: Well...
DEGGANS: But there are a lot of cool fight scenes.
DETROW: OK.
DEGGANS: And Michelle Yeoh is great at that stuff.
DETROW: That's NPR TV critic Eric Deggans. Thanks so much, Eric.
DEGGANS: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF GRAMATIK'S "MUY TRANQUILO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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