TVSquad

A funny thing happened when I turned on Bravo over the weekend. Instead of an avalanche of Flipping Out flip outs or Real Houswives' table-flipping or Tabitha's disgusting beauty salons, there was drama on the cable net. Bravo aired NBC's medical drama Mercy on Saturday morning.

On Saturday morning there really wasn't a lot going up against Mercy. In fact, it had the field pretty much to itself for any viewers looking for a quality, fresh TV show.

I say fresh because unlike the reruns of House or NCIS on USA, I hadn't seen these episodes of Mercy. So, rather than watch infomercials or pre-game college football chatter or animated cartoons, I watched Mercy.

Sing with me: here's a story about a doctor who is busy caring for rich folks in New York... Okay, it doesn't have the bouncy tune of a Sherwood Schwartz theme song, but this new USA show sounds like fun.

USA has picked up Royal Pains, a new summer series starring Mark Feuerstein as Hank Lawson, M.D., a doctor who is on-call to some of the most demanding patients around, the richie-riches who live in the fashionable Hamptons of Long Island.

There are a few reasons to be psyched about this new drama. For starters, it's coming from the same network that brings us Psych, not to mention Burn Notice, Starter Wife and In Plain Sight. In other words, USA has been doing very well in developing idiosyncratic, interesting comedy-drama series. There's no reason to think that Royal Pains will be a dud.

I watched Hopkins this week for the first time. It's a six-part documentary from ABC that delves into the lives of the real-life doctors who work at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, as well as the patients who come through its doors. It's reality TV at its grittiest and most heartbreaking, in some cases.

When I first heard about the show, it sounded like an interesting premise -- learn about the doctors and caregivers who work at this medical center I've heard about all my life. When not performing medical miracles, they're just regular people. And from what I gathered watching Episode 4 this week, the hospital pretty much takes over their lives, leaving little time or energy for the outside world and relationships.

Please file this item under the "Duh" file: Dr. Mehmet Oz, Oprah's favorite medical expert, is getting a spin-off talk show. Harpo Productions, Oprah's company, is developing a Dr. Oz talk show to commence fall of 2009.

According to insiders, the Harpo team had meetings with distributor in Chicago last month. A medical talker with Doc Oz, which I bet will be called Ask Dr. Oz -- the name of his successful segments on Oprah's show -- would follow in the footsteps of Dr. Phil. Remember, Dr. Phil McGraw began his life as a talker by appearing on Oprah in infrequent hours that were a de facto pilot for his own talk show. Dr. Phil then launched in 2002, as a Harpo production, and has been a big time hit. He's even challenged Oprah in some markets.

Showbiz has gone green, and that's not just ecologically! Green is flashing all over Hollywood. CBS has given the greenlight to three more pilots, including a doctor drama, a psychic romance, and a British-based tale of international love.

NY-LON (no, not nylon the fabric!), refers to the New York-London connection via air. The story, which writers Patti Carr and Lara Runnels (who both worked on 'Til Death) are translating from the U.K. version, is about a British businessman who meets a New York City record store clerk while she's in London, and then their subsequent attempts to maintain a transatlantic romance. The series ran seven episodes in England, which is not atypical. Of course, for American TV, many more episodes than that will be necessary to constitute a hit.

A pilot for the medical sitcom This Might Hurt (which will include some improv) has been picked up by FOX. The series will focus on a private practice where a pediatrician, an internist and an OB-GYN work together -- though presumably not at the same time, and not on the same person.

The new series was created by actor (You, Me, and Dupree; the failed CBS pilot, Giants of Radio), writer (The Wayne Brady Show) and director (Giants of Radio) Jason Winer, who, according to Variety, got the idea by spending time in a doctor's office. Also, he correctly points out that pain is funny.

Independent Lens doesn't shy away from featuring documentaries on difficult subjects, but out of all the ones I've seen so far, this one was the most heart-wrenching. Motherland Afghanistan follows an Afghan American doctor who returns to Afghanistan to work in a hospital to provide medical care and expertise for pregnant women who live in a land where infant mortality rates are high and medical supplies are always in short supply. Dr. Qudrat Mojadidi role at Afghanistan's largest hospital is not only to help patients, but to train the doctors and staff with the help of funding from the U.S. government.

Motherland Afghanistan focuses on a crisis in Afghanistan largely ignored here in the states, but it's worth seeing not only because it's educational, but because it shows there are still people willing to try and make things better despite the odds, and to help those in need not only through medical treatment, but through education as well.

Motherland Afghanistan, filmed and directed by Dr. Mojadidi's daughter Sedika, will air on select PBS stations tonight at 10 p.m.

Fox has given the green light to three pilots that could appear on the network's fall schedule. The pilots are hour-long dramas about lawyers, nurses, and law clerks.

Canterbury's Law is about a "headstrong female defense attorney" who practically bends the law to get justice for her innocent clients. Supreme Courtships (arrrgh, what a dumb name) is an ensemble dramedy about the personal lives of six U.S. Supreme Court clerks. The untitled nurse project is another ensemble dramedy about nurses in a big-city hospital.

I think this is indicative of one of the main problems in television these days. Everything is either crime or medical. How many freakin' lawyer shows do we need? They're not that interesting! And I am sick to death of anything set in a hospital. At least with Heroes and Lost we have original settings and situations.

CBS' new medical drama, 3 lbs, is looking for some ratings help from House. How is that possible since they're on different networks and are essentially the same show? It worked for ER. When ABC moved Grey's Anatomy to the 9 pm timeslot on Thursdays this fall, it unwittingly revived ER's ratings. Nielsen statistics show 32% of Grey's Anatomy viewers are switching over to NBC at 10 pm.

CBS is hoping for the same kind of success with 3 lbs, a drama about a rude-but-brilliant brain surgeon that is being called a rip-off of House (something that completely escaped me in my early review because I don't watch House). Even CBS admits 3 lbs is similar to House... but the network uses the word "compatible" to describe the similarities. CBS says it hopes The Unit provides a bunch of viewers, but it doesn't hurt that Fox's programming ends at ten, which is when 3 lbs begins.

Dick Wolf, who has brought NBC success with various versions of the Law & Order franchise, has two comedy scripts lined up for NBC. One is a single-camera comedy about a fumbling U.S. Congressman and the staff that try to handle him. The other is a medical sitcom about ER docs and paramedics. I think I've seen both of these shows before, they were called Spin City and Scrubs. Right now, neither show has a title.

I'd be interested to see what Dick Wolf's sense of humor is like. The man's entire resume is made up of crime dramas.