You don't have to watch tonight's premiere of "The Human Factor" for long before you know what this medical series' take on the profession is.
Star John Mahoney lies in a hospital bed as several young doctors troop in, one at a time, to deliver the bad news - he has a terminal condition and doesn't have much time left.Mahoney's character, Dr. Alec McMurtry, is just role playing, it turns out. And he's not particularly happy with the way his students played their roles.
"As a class, you have about as much sensitivity as George Steinbrenner," McMurtry tells them.
And sensitivity on the part of doctors is what "The Human Factor," which premieres at 9 p.m. on Ch. 5, is all about. The series' title is also the name of the class that McMurtry teaches at a big-city teaching hospital, where his goal is to personalize the medical profession. To make these medical students and future doctors realize their patients are people.
The teaching technique is based on actual courses taught at a few medical schools and hospitals.
"Generally, the first two years of medical school are in the classroom," said co-executive producer John Mankiewicz. "The premise for `The Human Factor' came a little bit from that and little bit from walking around buildings and seeing signs that say `medical corporations' instead of doctors' names.
"It's sort of an idea that a doctor, mid-career, would recognize that medicine had become sort of non-personal and would make a career change and go and teach at a school and teach this class."
Mahoney draws his character from his own "extensive medical background," which included working his way through college and graduate school as an orderly and working as an editor of a medical journal until he took up acting at 35.
"I saw very many of the negative aspects that I, as Alex McMurtry, am trying to steer the students away from," Mahoney said. "I saw much more of those, I'm sorry to say, than I did of anything positive.
"And so when I am working on my character, I go the opposite way. Instead of having a doctor as a role model, I sort of gear myself toward my memories of hundreds of patients I've taken care of as an orderly in a hospital.
"Because when you're in a small town, working in a hospital, obviously the doctors don't have enough time to spend a lot of time with people so it's usually people in menial tasks, such as I had, who listen to problems and who try to cheer people up and who saw just tremendous amounts of terror and fear, but also bravery in the face of death."
Which is not to say that McMurtry is the perfect doctor, nor is he a perfect human being.
"He is not a saint," said executive producer Dick Wolf. "He has his ups and downs. He has bad moods. He yells at people, he yells at his students, he yells at his wife at times.
"He is not an ogre. But we did not want to do `Marcus Welby.' "
"The Human Factor" begins an eight-week run with a pair of rather cliched story lines. In one, a bright young medical student (Kurt Deutsch) has to be convinced to deal with a terminal patient (Trini Alvarado) as more than just another case study. He learns the lesson so well he falls in love with the young woman.
In the other, the young son of religious fundamentalists requires heart surgery if he is to survive, but his parents' beliefs won't allow the procedure.
But while the stories have been done before, they are nicely handled in "The Human Factor." And, overall, the series creates comfortable characters despite their uncomfortable surroundings.
Which is not to say that this is a documentary. These are the doctors that we'd like to see, not necessarily the ones we actually do visit. Even the people in charge can't resist making comparisons between this show and other medical dramas that have preceded it.
"What we wanted was the writing strength of `St. Elsewhere,' " Wolf said. "And also an attempt to be more realistic . . . than `Marcus Welby.' "
Well, the writing isn't up to "St. Elsewhere" standards - yet - but it does show promise. And this is a more realistic show than "Welby" ever was.
"The Human Factor" is a well-made, quality drama, well worth giving a chance.