Deadline is reporting that director and TV producer Antoine Fuqua has just sold a new show to Showtime, currently being described as “The Shield, but for medical dramas.” Like Shawn Ryan’s critically beloved mid-2000s crime drama, The City will focus on a charismatic professional who’s ostensibly a “rule-breaking, gets results” type, who’s quickly revealed to actually be a cold-blooded killer with a taste for blood.
The new show will center on a young medical professional—let’s call them “Good Doctor”—who discovers that his or her would-be mentor—Crazy Doctor—is actually a “cunning and deadly psychopath.” (Then, if we’re really nailing down those Shield comparisons, Crazy Doctor will presumably do a bad surgery on Good Doctor at the end of the pilot episode, killing them, and leaving more screen-time for Walton Goggins Doctor to do his thing.)
As a bunch of people have pointed out, this is also basically the plot of Fuqua’s own Oscar-winner-turned-TV-show Training Day, except set in a hospital, and lacking Denzel Washington (or even Bill Paxton’s) malevolent charisma. That being said, the medical drama genre is so filled with charming-mavericks-whose-reckless-behavior-is-ultimately-revealed-to-be-key-to-saving-lives,-damn-it! (or CMWRBIURTBKTSL,DI!s, for short) that it’ll be kind of fun to find a Dr. House type who’s willing to straight-up admit he just likes torturing and killing people for the kicks.