A Peek into the Future on Pure Genius

Benevolent billionaire James Bell (Augustus Prew)
recruits Dr. Walter Wallace (Dermot Mulroney) to
join the Bunker Hill team in Pure Genius.

“In a lot of the medical shows we’ve seen and loved over the years, it’s all about the problems,” says Dermot Mulroney, who plays maverick surgeon Dr. Walter Wallace in the new Thursday-night drama Pure Genius.  “Our show is all about solutions.”

Created by Jason Katims, the man behind the acclaimed TV versions of Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, Pure Genius is a cutting-edge medical drama set at Silicon Valley’s fictional Bunker Hill Hospital, which has been endowed by billionaire genius James Bell (Augustus Prew) and charged with using emerging technology to treat the trickiest of diagnoses – at no charge.  Recruited after failing to save a patient in his native Ohio with a risky operation, Mulroney’s Dr. Wallace journeys west to join Bell’s staff, which already comprises the best-of-the-best:  physician Dr. Zoe Brockett (Odette Annable), idealistic neurosurgeon Talaikha Channarayapatra (Reshma Shetty), gang member-turned-med technician Dr. Malik Verlaine (Aaron Jennings), Ivy League-educated neurologist Dr. Scott Strauss (Ward Horton) and 3-D printing programming whiz Angie Cheng (Brenda Song.)

“The show is set essentially ten minutes in the future,” explains Prew, adding that “because much of the technology it shows” – like ingestible monitors and virtual-reality patient environments, depicted in just Pure Genius’ pilot episode – “actually exists.”  In fact, Dr. Wallace himself is partly based on one of Pure Genius’ real-life medical consultants, Dr. Brennan Spiegel, a surgeon at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Hospital.  “Dr. Spiegel’s specialty is infiltrating medicine with technology, finding new ways and inventing new devices to track and monitor patients,” says Mulroney.  “I’m sure you’ll see his influence in my character, because when I met him, I noted how his body moved, and how he uses medical tools.  I tried to pick up a feel for the guy, and put it into the part.”

Amid today’s debates over privatization versus more government-sponsored initiatives like Obama-care, Pure Genius taps into “a very important part of the zeitgeist right now,” Prew enthuses.  “What if you could have the best minds in technology and medicine paired together?  How could we make the healthcare system better?  How could we change lives?  The show is about what could be, and we’re hoping to spur change.”

Mulroney, too, expects Pure Genius to bring an inspiring dose of optimism to our screens each week.  “There’s a little magic” in the show, he admits, because not all of the Bunker Hill doctors’ innovative moves are yet completely possible.  “But that’s one of its great appeals.  You’ll say, ‘Is that really happening?’ And instead of saying ‘No,’ we’ll get to say ‘Not yet.’”

Thursdays at 10 PM Eastern

Begins October 27

Parenthood, Take 3

Today, NBC presented its panel on its newest drama, premiering at midseason, Parenthood. Critics asked Lauren Graham about stepping in for Maura Tierney, who continues her treatments for breast cancer and who the show's executive producer Jason Katims says is "doing well." Katims explains, by the way, that they delayed the show, which was originally supposed to premiere in the fall of 2009, in deference to Tierney, who was the one who opted out of the show and gave the go-ahead to recast.

The show is also quite unusual in at least two other ways: 1) it's based on a movie from two decades ago, Parenthood which starred Steve Martin and Mary Steenburgen in 1989, and 2) it's being attempted even though an earlier TV adaptation failed in 1990. That Parenthood, says Ron Howard, one of the new show's executive producers and the director of the original film, was more of a sitcom treatment of the material, which he says in hindsight wasn't the right approach. This new show, Katims and Howard say, is a combination of comedy and drama (and is an hour long.) When the new show's pilot was re-shot with Graham replacing Tierney, it was lightened up a bit, away from the other extreme of heavy drama.

Howard told, by the way, the fun story of the film's origins in the '80s; back when he was heading to Argentina to make the film Gung Ho, he got on a 17-hour flight with his family and dozens of carry-on and checked bags. In the first hour, he decided to let his young daughter Bryce try his sushi appetizer; baby Bryce -- now better known as the movie star Bryce Dallas Howard -- proceeded to projectile vomit all over his shirt. "Great -- let's totally embarrass her," Graham said with a laugh as Howard told the story on stage.

Graham says she had spent the past 2 or 3 years not planning on acting in TV but looking for projects to produce, but could not resist the quality and pedigree of the Parenthood script when it was sent to her this past year. The show does have an impressive cast, including Six Feet Under's Peter Krause, Boston Legal's Monica Potter, Erika Christensen, Dax Shepard, Craig T. Nelson, and Bonnie Bedelia, who was so fabulous most recently on Del Shores' Sordid Lives.

Parenthood debuts on Monday, March 1 at 9 PM Eastern on NBC.