Realizing that the only thing that could top the depressing intensity of Grey’s Anatomy’s hospital shootings, murderous icicles, and detonating bombs would be to set the whole thing in an actual warzone, ABC has put into development a new Shondaland project about medevac workers operating in Iraq. The show doesn’t have a title yet—looking at you, Fray’s Anatomy—but will take place during the 2004 occupation of the country, and will center on military doctors working to rescue comrades who have been wounded in dangerous situations. (Lest all this military stuff put you off, though, rest assured that the heroic young doctors will also “get on each others’ nerves, sleep with the wrong people, navigate ‘office’ politics and party like there’s no tomorrow,” in traditional Shondaland style.)
The project is the brainchild of Zoanne Clack, a medical doctor and TV producer who’s worked for years as a consultant on Grey’s. Clack’s background includes a year of work for the Center For Disease Control’s international emergency medicine program, and also, we’re guessing, at least a couple episodes of M*A*S*H. She’ll serve as an executive producer on the new show, along with Shondaland masterminds Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers.
The new show is something like the billionth or so Shondaland show that ABC’s bought into of late; other projects include a legal drama, a nun drama, and a comedy about divorce. Clack’s show will be the production company’s first new medical drama since 2011’s Off The Map, hopefully proving that the plucky, doctor-humping, STAT-shouting genre might still have a chance in this big, scary TV world.