TV shows we love: New Amsterdam

Despite crying while watching every episode, I very much enjoyed New Amsterdam. Perhaps it was the utopian scenario which solely focused on a small group of state doctors devoted to the Hippocratic oath to ‘help everyone’, sometimes by putting their own lives at risk. While perfectly aware these ‘too good to be true’ professionals wouldn’t last a day working in a local hospital, their fictional existence gave me hope about real life doctors.

Then again maybe it was the cancer diagnosis that led the new medical director Dr Max Goodwin to turn the medical centre upside down by satisfying all the impossible requests of its staff members and patients.

From establishing a palliative care department without a budget to chasing down an insurance company to persuade them to change their policy and agree to pay for a cancer patient’s surrogacy, there was no stopping Dr Goodwin. The surprising fact is that most of the times he got, another unrealistic aspect of the series.

To ensure the series remains exciting, the viewer only has access to the most rare, controversial and surprising health issues, leaving the typical flus, boring sprained ankles and straightforward surgeries deep in the background.

Through the work of the hospital’s psychiatrist Dr Iggy Frome, the script tackles a variety of mental issues and demonstrates the gaps in the American foster care system.

New Amsterdam also features issues of substance abuse, familial relationships and grief during its engagement with the limited personal life of the doctors.

Another element I applauded was the on-point child acting, an aspect I usually dread when watching minors on the small or big screens.

The only warning I would give is to have the tissues handy – when they say drama, they really mean drama.