Monday Mornings

Monday Mornings doesn’t break major new ground in TV medical dramas. It has a couple of nice twists and does a couple of familiar things well.

Most of Mornings is stock melodrama, and apart from Molina, not all that well acted. [18 Feb 2013, p.43]

Not all the cases turn out badly, but enough do that the show takes on a rather grim formula.... That's a lot of talent to work with and the good news is that Monday Mornings shows signs of finding its voice by episode three.

It’s a straightforward piece of work that, with some deepening of characters and a few detours from too well-trodden plot paths, could be a decent addition to the TNT lineup.

The M&Ms are brutal and might have set Monday Mornings apart as a psychological examination of regret and human error. But in the three episodes sent for review, producers David E. Kelley and CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta (adapting this from his 2012 novel) instead overdose on the same sappy storylines we've seen before.

If this show is to breathe, someone should take a scalpel to the malignant melodrama. [8 Feb 2013, p.69]

There are few likable characters here, the centerpiece M&M meetings should be what sets the series apart but is actually bogging it down into nonsense.

Full-fledged human beings are slow to emerge; the characters are long on attitude but short on detail.... The show could use some of the quirkiness that has enlivened Kelley shows such as "Picket Fences" and "Boston Legal."

Monday Mornings, TNT’s new hospital drama from David E. Kelley, takes what might have been a fresh angle and overdoses it with the usual sappy storylines and cheap, melodramatic editing style.