Never underestimate the TV-watching community’s love for competent medical professionals, especially when they can warm a few hearts while saving a few lives, as Variety says that ABC has given The Good Doctor a second season. The show has apparently been the “undisputed freshman hit” of the current TV season, averaging 9.8 million viewers on the same-day ratings—meaning nearly 10 million people watch this show when it airs and not on the DVR or on Hulu the next day. That also puts it directly behind Grey’s Anatomy as the second highest-rated show on ABC. The ratings have been so good, as Variety also notes, that ABC gave it a full season after airing only two episodes.
The Good Doctor stars Freddie Highmore as a young man who has autism and is good at being a doctor, and in a statement ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said that the show has “quickly joined the zeitgeist and broken records in the competitive television landscape.”