Dear God. We know it’s only January 4th, and to be quite frank Empire is still in something of a post-Christmas/New Year’s stupor. So we can understand that Hollywood hasn’t yet cranked up to full working capacity yet, but we’re making an appeal right now: can y’all get it together over there in Tinseltown and put some major movie deals together so we don’t have to resort to writing a story about JJ Abrams producing a medical drama on HBO and pretend it’s news?
Anyway, here it is: Abrams, the wunderkind behind Alias, Lost, the under-rated Mission: Impossible III and the forthcoming revamp of all things Star Trekky, has teamed up with the world’s most cutting-edge cable channel (yes, UK Gold, that includes you) to executive produce and perhaps direct a pilot for a series that explores the battle against cancer from the p.o.v. of the patient.
While this obviously isn’t laugh a minute material, we have to concede that this is the sort of risky approach that is an obvious fit for both HBO and Abrams, who like to push the envelope so much that you have to walk across the room just to put a stamp on it. Doing things from the patients’ viewpoint will immediately give the series a different tone from the myriad medical dramas clogging up US (and UK airwaves), while also sparing us from the love lives of a succession of cute doctors (see Grey’s Anatomy, ER, Scrubs, Holby bleedin’ City).
The as-yet untitled project was actually created by Rafael Yglesias and Tom Schulman, the screenwriter of Dead Poet’s Society. The latter has written about cancer before, in the John McTiernan/Sean Connery misfire, Medicine Man.
This drama, though, will be based on a book entitled The Anatomy Of Hope: How People Prevail In The Face Of Illness, by New Yorker writer, Harvard professor and world record Tri-Ominoes player, Jerome Groopman. Groopman and his missus, Pamela Hartzband, who also happens to be a Harvard big brain, will act as consultants on the show, which is sure to be challenging and often gruelling – yet the title of the book suggests that not every episode will be a three-hanky affair.