Heartbeat (2016)

TV is glutted with generic medical dramas, from the ridiculous “Night Shift” to the thoroughly middle-of-the-road “Code Black.” This one marks a very slight improvement, elevated by a fine protagonist played by a fine actress.

It bounces off the walls of St. Matthew’s, with its rush-about protagonist flirting, sobbing, threatening, cajoling and commiserating, all the while trying to find the true meaning of something or other. Sedative, please. STAT.

While the likable cast--which includes D.L. Hughley, Jamie Kennedy and Maya Erskine--is easy to root for, there is little else to distinguish Heartbeat from numerous other medical shows.

I’d ask for a script doctor, but it’s time to call the code and be done with it.

Some characters spark and it’s far from the mess it could have been, but like every medical show since Grey’s Anatomy‘s 8th season (yes, including Grey’s Anatomy), it employs the genre’s tropes in a manner that barely feels like it has a pulse of its own.

Heartbeat has welcome flashes of true weirdness. But the show isn't thoughtful enough to earn its insouciance.

Some of it might have been written by a computer, sure, but a better class of computer than sometimes is hired to write for TV. The cast, which also includes D.L. Hughley as a psychologist, Maya Erskine as a nurse and Jamie Kennedy as an unkempt, somewhat obnoxious doctor (softened in later episodes), is pleasant company.

Heartbeat does have moments that are satisfying emotionally. Yet the TV trope of the hospital with its motley cast of dedicated caregivers--the contemporary trajectory goes from “St. Elsewhere” to “ER” to “Grey’s Anatomy”--is difficult to riff on in a fresh way. So surgeon Dr. Alexandra Panettiere ( Melissa George) has to jump the shark by being a superwoman.

Plenty of fascinating medical material here for a series. And yet, Heartbeat botches the job, because the dialogue, direction and supporting characters are wearisomely artificial.

As long as the much better Grey's is still on the air, there's absolutely no reason to watch this insipid variation.

All of Alex’s quirks (she has a tendency to spit while talking) and surgical brilliance (practically on a whim, she pulls off a heart transplant procedure that only four others have managed before her) can’t mask the grim fact that she’s ultimately a collection of threadbare drama-series clichés. ... Even worse, the show’s supporting characters are all some combination of bland, unbelievable, and/or reprehensible.

Unfortunately, by the end of the first hour, viewers may find themselves looking for a pulse rather than committing to future installments, let alone pondering the state of female medical practitioners in the industry and their work-home life balance.

It is so overstuffed with action and complications and heavy breathing that it never comes close to being credible.

This star showcase does [Melissa George] no favors.... Dr. Alex doesn’t invite favorable comparisons to any doctor with dignity, and I would guess this series will not have a very long life.

The relationships are paint-by-numbers predictable as are the plots and Alex's I-know-better-than-everyone-else reactions. Heartbeat has a pulse but just barely.

The series plays like a rather pallid “Grey’s Anatomy” knockoff, featuring another doctor who cares desperately about her patients, runs roughshod over subordinates and bosses alike, and walks and talks very, very fast.

Homicidally irritating.

Heartbeat is, sadly, a show without much of a pulse.

Where Grey’s benefits from an ensemble approach, Heartbeat pins all its hopes on this one surgeon, and the problem is that she’s obnoxious, and nearly infallible.... That’s why Heartbeat is doomed: We’ve seen more compelling versions of all of this before.

It's completely ridiculous.

This series recycles just about every TV medical drama cliché you can imagine. It's not just that it's predictable, but it's utterly unbelievable. And all attempts to make it quirky and delightful just make it lame and dumb.