OUT OF THE BLUE

A man clutches his throat and falls to the floor of the church/theater/stadium. “Is there a doctor in the house?”

You bet. He/she, almost life-sized, hangs on the family room wall, surrounded by hospital personnel and patients in various stages of maladies du jour.

Long live the medical drama!

Google, er, cough up Marcus Welby, Ben Casey, Doc Martin, Doogie Howser, Dr. Quinn operating on Chicago Med, Chicago Hope, Brilliant Minds, Nip/Tuck, St. Elsewhere, New Amsterdam and dozens more. Some mildly entertaining, slightly informative. Others silly and manipulative. Now, the genre has come full circle led by — yes! — Noah Wyle, who earned his TV-MD as Dr. John Carter on ER.

Now, Wyle’s back as Dr. Michael Robinavitch, the bearded, graying chief resident at a busy Pittsburgh hospital known only as The Pitt, hence the name of the show. Meek ’n’ mild Carter, now irascible, overplays every emotion. He hugs, he storms, he whines, he cries and comforts for which he cleaned up at the Emmys, both as an actor and as a producer/director.

Never mind that the jargon is spit out faster than viewers can absorb, let alone comprehend.

Each episode covers a shift, 8 a.m. till whenever. The cases, mostly emergencies, vary: a snatched-from-the-headlines mass shooting, to an autistic young man’s ankle broken while playing Ping-Pong, to a fistfight (two women) in the waiting room, to a cringe-worthy birth and several deaths. Lots of profanity, of course (cable On Demand), but how about this foray during opening credits — “nudity in a medical setting.”

Fear not, there’s nothing erotic about watching a corpulent lady soak in an ice bath.

The only familiar face is Wyle’s. None of his fellow actors suffered carryover from lawyer shows. But they did display diversity: Latino, Indian, Asian, Black, Caucasian, young, ripped, paunchy, bald, beards and assorted ethnic head coverings.

The hour raced by. I loved it.

My primary bone to pick, so to speak: blood everywhere. On the injured, of course, but spilling off the gurneys onto the floor, running down white fabric and clear plastic gowns, soaking through bed linens? The janitor mopping it up reminded me of the gravedigger scene from Hamlet.

Then, the soundtrack is loud and mostly jargon. I missed many words but, oh, the rolling eyes, the knowing looks. The scary part, assuming situations are realistic and thoroughly vetted, is outcome uncertainty in a busy teaching hospital.

By now you’ve guessed that I’m still a cable subscriber so I endure the ads for prescription drugs. The list of contraindications, it seems, is longer than the benefits, and sometimes ends in death. Yet the medication itself is described in glowing terms by happy, healthy actors. Recently 150-year-old Eli Lilly spent a bundle reimaging itself as “a medicine company” with the m-word replacing scarier “drug.’’ Their TV spokespeople are more likely dairy farmers than stockbrokers. Their profits, just imagine.

I asked a local physician about the dire tech stuff. He said it’s for protection in court proceedings.

“You were warned!”

Another warning: I’m not sure The Pitt will survive many seasons . . . too much medical, not enough drama. Although to its credit, the hour left me with a splitting headache.