Review: ‘The Pitt’ puts Noah Wyle back in scrubs in day-in-the-life medical drama

“The Pitt,” on HBO’s streaming platform Max, is a weekly medical drama that emulates the kind of shows that have long been — and remain — a staple on network TV. It’s an instructive blueprint for other streamers to follow.

Starring Noah Wyle, who knows his way around a hospital show thanks to his 11 seasons on “ER,” the 15-episode series is the work of a team that understands how television should be paced, satisfying the needs of an episodic weekly series while juggling ongoing storylines.

The show’s style is realism, with each episode tracking an hour of Wyle’s Dr. Michael Robinavitch’s 15-hour shift running the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital’s chaotic emergency department.

Everyone calls him Robby, or Dr. Robby. He’s approachable and good-humored. Along with the department’s unflappable charge nurse Dana (Katherine LaNasa) and a handful of residents, they guide a new class of wide-eyed interns and medical students through their first day.

A doctor ending his overnight shift is greeted by a new intern: “I can’t tell you how excited I am to be here!” He gives her an incredulous look, and then says: “Talk to me at the end of the day.”

Don’t mind him, Robby says, he had a rough night and is having an ongoing existential crisis. But the departing doctor gets the last word: “Don’t worry, you’ll get there soon enough.”

It’s the banter of grizzled veterans, but we also get to know the patients enough that they’re not cardboard cutouts but human beings experiencing a terrible, scary, occasionally humorously bizarre moment in their lives.

There also are close-ups of scalpels cutting into skin and glimpses of the human body in various states of mangled and bloody distress. We have no clue how much or little of it is accurate, but from an entertainment standpoint, it delivers.

That’s largely because Wyle is giving such a wonderfully unfussy performance. Robby is uncannily good with people, and he’s a steady presence when things hit the fan.

Even so, Robby is operating under considerable strain. He’s an expert at bottling his feelings in order to maintain an even keel within the whirling dervish of the emergency room.

Like any show of this type, the doctors and nurses are given the hero treatment. What’s missing are more complicated, inconvenient realities a show like “The Pitt” is built to tackle if it wanted, including medical racism and doctors being dismissive of their patients’ insights or concerns.

The topic of insurance coverage (and all the stress related to that, for both patients and doctors) also is a nonissue, which feels like an egregious omission. But hospital shows tend to focus on feel-good stories, and pounding on something like constantly denied insurance claims has a way of short-circuiting that.

“The Pitt” is not glossy, and it’s not presenting a moodily lit fantasy. It’s a day-in-the-life, and all the more compelling for it.

The quality of the ensemble players is hit-and-miss. Taylor Dearden (Bryan Cranston’s daughter) is particularly good as a thoughtful and literal-minded, if socially awkward, intern.

But the primary reasons to watch are Wyle and LaNasa’s charge nurse, playing longtime hospital veterans who are fully formed and imperfect personalities, and deeply compelling screen presences as a result.

From a viewer’s perspective, if you’ve seen one hospital drama, you’ve seen them all. What distinguishes one show from another is whether the writing and casting is any good. And “The Pitt” lands on both fronts to make it essential viewing.