TV’s 10 Best Medical Comedies, Ranked

TV talent aligned when Hill Street Blues’ Steven Bochco and L.A. Law’s David E. Kelly teamed up to create this sitcom, which featured a young Neil Patrick Harris as a prodigal teenager who gets his medical license before his driver’s license. (In fact, Doogie stops his driving test to tend to an injured motorist.) Joke’s on whichever adult colleague doubts his abilities!

Before starring on M*A*S*H, Wayne Rogers joined Lynn Redgrave in this sitcom, inspired by the Walter Matthau–Glenda Jackson movie of the same name. He’s a rule-breaking San Francisco surgeon; she’s the English-bred administrative assistant trying to keep him and the hospital on track. And they’re dating, of course, in this charming odd-couple comedy.

If there were a darker, ranker British counterpart to Scrubs, it’d be Green Wing, a surreal mix of soap-opera serialization and sketch-comedy zaniness, all filmed at a working hospital. Better yet, the storylines were bolstered by the improvisations of the cast, which included Olivia Colman pre-Oscar win and Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan pre-Episodes.

One of the biggest hits of USA Network’s “blue sky” era of comedic dramas, Royal Pains follows Dr. Hank Lawson (Mark Feuerstein) as he goes from NYC emergency-room physician to Hamptons concierge doc. With big doses of charisma — including that of Paulo Costanzo as Hank’s young brother — Royal Pains was anything but to watch.

The title notwithstanding, this former web series ended up on Adult Swim when it came to television. A parody of medical dramas, Childrens Hospital follows pediatric docs with elevated levels of ego and libido — and a deficiency of, you know, medical competence. But with actors like Ken Marino, Megan Mullally, Henry Winkler, and creator Rob Corddry, the absurdity works.

In this comedy, Laurie Metcalfe plays an ICU ward’s director of medicine, and Alex Borstein, Niecy Nash, and Mel Rodriguez play the ward’s long-suffering nurses. Wringing humor from hospital bureaucracies, misguided ambitions, and oddball patients — June Squibb’s character calls herself a “d*** magnet” — Getting On finds a lot of life amid a lot of death.

What happens when a London surgeon develops a fear of blood? Well, in the case of this British comedy-drama’s eponymous character, he moves to a Cornish village, where his brash manner does him no favors with the bucolic area’s residents. Gradually though, Martin Clunes’ big, bristly fish finds himself at home in his small pond.

After earning six Emmy nominations for The Sopranos, Edie Falco pulled off the same feat with her performance of this show’s overworked, sharp-tongued, prescription-addicted New York City ER nurse — who’s sleeping with the hospital pharmacist —on this comedy-drama. Jackie is an advocate for her patients, but the “do no harm” rule doesn’t apply to her personal life.

Take it from the years-long push for a Scrubs reboot: Viewers loved their stay at Sacred Heart, a teaching hospital populated by likable interns and their lovably loathsome superiors. Ratcheted up with musical numbers, cutaway jokes, running gags, and one of the best bromances on TV, Scrubs is probably the epitome of a TV medical comedy. And yet it’s not our No. 1 pick…

Though set against the grave backdrop of the Korean War, M*A*S*H nevertheless married comedy and drama, at least in its early seasons, as it followed the working family of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. There’s slapstick, wisecracks, comebacks, but there’s also heartbreaking humanity, too. And the show’s widely-watched finale cemented it as a TV classic and a cultural phenomenon.