Damian Marcano

Hospital staff trying to get through an exhausting job are enough to sustain The Pitt (2025), and Marcano is one of the directors who keeps us close to them. This is the strongest reason we have to recommend him: the pressure holds without making the people incidental. We were drawn in by Noah Wyle and Katherine LaNasa, whose warmth makes the staff worth caring about. That success belongs to the performers and the wider production as well as to Marcano.

His career has two strands: Trinidad-set features he writes himself, and US television made alongside other directors. God Loves the Fighter (2013) was his debut feature, and he moved into American television directing in 2016. Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (2022) and Lawmen: Bass Reeves (2023) belong to that second strand. But Chee$e (2022), which he wrote, directed and photographed, kept him working in Trinidadian settings with responsibility for the image as well as the script.

His working habits help explain why television suits him. He often has actors read scenes aloud before shooting to find where the emotion sounds truthful, a practical starting point for the kind of ensemble work The Pitt requires. He also works to maintain consistency of tone and character across episodes handled by different directors. Producer and showrunner John Wells is among his collaborators. We value that ability to sustain a programme without insisting that each instalment announce a new hand behind the camera.

The reservation is that closeness to the action cannot make every character interesting. Some of The Pitt’s supporting characters remain thinly written, despite the warmth elsewhere, and we would not mistake the programme’s urgency for depth in every role. Start there for the sustained tension and the performances, and allow the awkward opening time to settle.