NBC
From good doctors to sexy doctors to funny doctors to Chicago doctors, network TV has no shortage of medical professionals wandering its fictional hospital halls. Now NBC has a new twist on the age-old formula: What if there were a doctor with… face blindness?
Okay, to be fair, face blindness is just one of the many quirks that characterize Zachary Quinto’s brilliant neurosurgeon Dr. Oliver Wolf. He also swims in the Hudson River, obsesses over his plants, hates interacting with his co-workers, and will do anything for his patients, including smuggling them across town on his motorcycle when he thinks they need a day out. Still, it’s hard to ignore the hook that sounds like the set-up for a joke even though it’s at least somewhat based on reality.
Brilliant Minds, which premieres Sept. 23, is loosely inspired by real-life neurologist Oliver Sacks, who had prosopagnosia (aka. face blindness) and published stories of unique medical cases like his own in popular books like 1985’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. While Sacks was born in interwar London and started his career in the 1960s, Brilliant Minds sets its story in an overcrowded, understaffed present-day Bronx hospital that’s the only place in town still willing to take a chance on Dr. Wolf’s rule-bending approach.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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