ER finds renewed success after The Pitt tops streaming charts 

The first two episodes of The Pitt are on air and the Max show has already managed to invite comparison with ER. The Pitt is a medical procedural show led by Noah Wyler. It is based in the emergency room of a fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. At the center of the Max show is the character of Dr. Robby, the chief attending physician of the emergency room who leads a team of doctors and nurses.

The debut of the medical drama on Max has been met with resounding success both from the audiences and the critics. The audience appreciation for the show has catapulted The Pitt to the no. 1 position on Max. On the other hand, the show has also garnered a respectable 92% Rotten Tomatoes ratings.

As a result of this new-found popularity of the Max show, the genre of hospital-based medical dramas has once again managed to draw the spotlight. In the past, there have been several legacy medical drama shows, from St. Elsewhere, that aired in the 1980s to the more recent Grey's Anatomy.

ER was a highly acclaimed medical drama created by Michael Crichton that aired from 1997 to 2004. The popularity of The Pitt seems to have rubbed off on ER, as the latter is now at No. 9 on the streamer's list of Top 10, as revealed by FlixPatrol on Sunday, January 19.

Here's everything that we know.

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What is The Pitt all about?

The Pitt on Max follows Dr. Michael "Robby" Rabinavitch (Wyle), who heads a team of physicians, nurses, and trainees as they cope with the pandemonium of treating emergency patients, as well as the red tape, limited resources, and drama that comes with the position.

The 15-episode first season is told in real time and follows a single shift in the ER, giving viewers an authentic glimpse at what medical personnel face daily. It is interesting to note that both Executive Producer John Wells and creator R. Scott Gemmill have also worked on ER in the past.

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Showrunners open up about the similarities between The Pitt and ER

Show creator R. Scott Gemmill recently spoke in an interview with The Wrap where he spoke about the alleged similarities between the Max show and ER, and whether the former is a rehash of the latter. He stated:

"I don’t ever want to do the same thing twice, nor do John or Noah (who also serves as an EP on the show)… There’s no incentive there. As far as medical shows go, ‘The Pitt’ is as different as we could have made it, everything from characters to the location to our set design and how we shot it to make it a completely new show. The last thing I want is for people to say ‘Oh, I’ve seen all this before.'”

He also added:

"We pride ourselves in the authenticity of what you see. We don’t do the usual setup of people talking while their hands are just making salad motions underneath the camera.”

Noah Wyle spoke about the unconventional format of the show in an interview with TV Insider:

"Scott brought the real time storytelling framework to the table, and John, Max and Warner Brothers were on board to try to make use of this new platform of streaming, to see whether or not we could tell the story in a visually more arresting way than we did back in the ’90s — a more photorealistic way than we were ever able to do, and in a more organic, performance-based way."

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The Pitt airs new episodes weekly on Max.