One of HBO’s flagship show, The Pitt, has just entered production for season 3, marking a delightful return to the golden age of TV. For the past two years, there’s been a great deal of conversation about The Pitt, HBO’s flagship medical TV show. Created by R Scott Gemmill, the series takes place over a ... The Pitt might just be bringing back old-school comfort TV
One of HBO’s flagship show, The Pitt, has just entered production for season 3, marking a delightful return to the golden age of TV.
For the past two years, there’s been a great deal of conversation about The Pitt, HBO’s flagship medical TV show. Created by R Scott Gemmill, the series takes place over a single shift at a busy emergency department. It’s executive produced by John Wells and Noah Wyle and the trio all worked on ER back in the 90s, so we knew we were in good hands as we headed through the doors of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.
The show wrapped up season 2 in April, although the UK is a little behind and we’re still getting weekly episodes. HBO has now announced that season 3 is in production, meaning we’re likely to get the new season in early 2027. Considering both season 1 and 2 premiered in January, it would make sense for season 3 to keep that trend going.
The video, posted on HBO’s socials, confirms the return of many fan-favourite characters, like Charge Nurse Dana Evans, Dr Cassie McKay, Dr Frank Langdon and Noah Wyle’s Dr Robby.
Getting an annual new season of a TV show feels like a rare treat nowadays. Shows like The Last Of Us, Succession and House Of The Dragon have kept us waiting a couple years between seasons, though even Game Of Thrones managed to push out a season a year, despite the growing production values and increasing CGI involved in the later seasons.
Back in the 90s and 2000s, it was the norm to get new seasons every year, which would often consist of 22 episodes. Now, almost everything is a limited season, usually not running for longer than 10 episodes, although six seems to be a popular number. Even something like The Bear, which is about to release its final season, only offers us eight to 10 episodes per run.
Meanwhile, more and more movie stars are tipping their toes in the world of TV. Amy Adams, Patrick Wilson and Javier Bardem are currently starring in AppleTV’s Cape Fear adaptation, and Pedro Pascal was a superb choice for the role of Joel in The Last Of Us. It used to be that an actor or filmmaker got their start on TV and graduated into movies, but that seems to have completely changed, with actors moving between the two with relative ease.
It’s the same with directors. Despite having made a string of great films, it was 2018’s The Haunting Of Hill House that really made Mike Flanagan’s name as he scared us with the sinister antics of the Bent-Neck Lady. Now, the director has just wrapped up production for the new The Exorcist movie while also preparing to release a TV adaptation of Carrie.
These days, TV shows have started to resemble longer films, chopped into little chapters rather than more strict, episodic narratives.
The Pitt, on the other hand, leans back into the classic TV formula that made shows like the aforementioned ER, Gilmore Girls, Friends, Prison Break and Buffy The Vampire Slayer such comfort food. We could rely on those shows to deliver the goods at regular intervals, even if those goods sometimes varied in quality. Each year, you knew you had roughly six months of weekly episodes of your favourite entertainment – and I don’t know about you, but I miss it like crazy in this new era of shorter seasons, even if the production values have gone up considerably.
To its advantage, The Pitt takes place in a relatively confined but varied location, and has a solid cast that rarely changes, making production a whole lot easier. Covering a single shift in each season has also turned out to be a stroke of genius, as it keeps things moving at a solid pace, allowing for a bigger narrative across the season with individual cases forming the bases of each episode. In season 2, Dr Robby is on his last shift before his three-month sabbatical and handing his department over in the midst of a cyber attack – a plot that forms the heart of the whole season. But it’s cases like Roxie, the woman dying of cancer, or Dr Mel’s sister coming in with a UTI that take us through individual episodes.
While The Pitt has seemingly found the perfect recipe for a TV show that could last for years, it’s difficult to keep things fresh. Another medical series, Grey’s Anatomy, is one of the longest running scripted American TV shows, but its quality has plummeted over the years. Season 22 ended its run earlier this year and season 23 is set to air later in 2026. But watching the newer episodes, which tend to veer on the silly and repeat past storylines, it’s a wonder whether it should have ended a few years ago.
The Pitt season 3 is looking promising, and if it’s anything like seasons 1 and 2, we’re in for another excellent bit of TV. We may have bigger stars, more expansive stories and more better visual effects on TV now, but in between every season of, say, The Last Of Us, it’s nice to have a couple seasons of The Pitt to enjoy.
