An archive of articles about US television programmes and production.
Review: Miami Medical 1×1 (US: CBS)

In the US: Fridays, 10/9c, CBS
LES MOONVES: Damn it! I need a producer in here, stat!
Enter JERRY BRUCKHEIMER
BRUCKHEIMER: What is it, sir?
LES MOONVES: Thank God you’re here, Bruckheimer. CBS has no medical shows
There’s a stunned pause
BRUCKHEIMER: No medical shows?
LES MOONVES: That’s right. No medical shows. We just don’t have any. I need you to make me one – now!
BRUCKHEIMER: But, sir, you can’t rush something as important as this!
LES MOONVES: Don’t give me that, Bruckheimer. It’s an emergency! Right now, you’re making CSI, CSI: Miami, and CSI: New York for me, and The Forgotten for ABC. No way you didn’t rush half of those out. So give me your pitch – now!
BRUCKHEIMER gives himself a shakedown and begins to pitch
BRUCKHEIMER: So it’s like ER, in a trauma hospital.
LES MOONVES (warning): Expensive. Contract renegotiation is always a bitch on ensemble shows.
BRUCKHEIMER: Small cast! It’ll be shot in… Miami, so we can have lots of shots of women in bikinis. It’ll be stupid, like CSI: Miami, but life-affirming like The Forgotten.
LES MOONVES: Dialogue?
BRUCKHEIMER: Painful.
LES MOONVES: Plots?
BRUCKHEIMER: Tortured and over-elaborate.
LES MOONVES: Characters?
BRUCKHEIMER: Thin and poorly sketched. Noble, but comedic black orderly. Fiery ambitious Latina. Brilliant but cocky young doctor. Young doctor with a heart. That kind of thing. But there’ll be plenty of blood, explosions, that kind of thing to keep the prurient interested.
LES MOONVES: We need something else.
BRUCKHEIMER: What?
LES MOONVES: A Brit. Like with House.
BRUCKHEIMER: How about that guy who played Sir Thomas More on The Tudors?
LES MOONVES: Jeremy Northam? Excellent!
BRUCKHEIMER: But, sir, I don’t think it’s going to work. Look what happened to Three Rivers. It’ll be just the same as Trauma on NBC but less exciting and less well written and that’s ratings poison!
LES MOONVES: I don’t care! Give me 13!


