Heartbeat (2016)

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.