John Wells

In The Pitt (2025), the hospital staff have an exhausting job, and watching them do it is absorbing television. Noah Wyle and Katherine LaNasa give those staff weight and warmth, helped by a format that follows the work in real time. We found their warmth a relief amid the exhausting work. Wells directs and executive produces the series, and this attention to workers under pressure is a persuasive reason to follow his work.

ER (1994) established the medical ensemble as a central part of that work, with Wells serving as writer, director, executive producer and showrunner. He later developed the American Shameless (2011), another series on which he wrote, directed and executive produced. Sustaining programmes over long runs is one of his strengths, though it makes the director's contribution harder to separate from the producer's. His collaborators include director-producer Christopher Chulack and writer-showrunner R. Scott Gemmill; this is television made through continuing working relationships.

His feature directing debut, The Company Men (2010), took corporate downsizing as its subject, extending his interest in what work does to people. August: Osage County (2013) followed, bringing Tracy Letts's play to the screen with a large ensemble. His films have had a more mixed critical reception than his television work. We would start with the hospital drama rather than make the features the main reason to seek him out.

The Pitt also shows the limits of the approach: its opening is awkward, and some supporting characters remain thinly written. Real-time storytelling cannot supply the detail a script has left out, however absorbing the work itself becomes. Wyle and LaNasa make the staff worth following, but that does not remove the need to give the people around them more substance. Allow a little patience for that opening; an exhausting profession makes surprisingly good company for an evening.