Cinema News: Another TV doctor makes a return this week

January 9, 2026 | View in browser

A woman doctor comforts a woman and a man.

By Yvonne Villarreal, Robert Lloyd and Joshua Rothkopf

Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who considers "watch TV medical dramas to escape reality" a motivating hobby that falls within their 2026 vision board goals.

Yes, TV darling "The Pitt" made its anticipated Season 2 return this week. But another medical drama that's built a following also scrubbed in. Season 2 of "Doc," Fox's drama starring Molly Parker as a doctor who loses eight years of memory after an injury, is back from its holiday break. Parker dropped by Guest Spot to unpack the show's mid-season premiere.

Also in this week's Screen Gab, we recommend a travelogue series shot in France that serves as a celebration of a 40-year friendship and a collection of '90s films that journey through the '70s.

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Healthcare cuts, ICE and AI: 'The Pitt's' creator on telling authentic stories in Season 2: R. Scott Gemmill, the creator and showrunner of HBO Max's "The Pitt," spoke about the show's breakout success and what he has planned for Season 2.

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Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times

"The '90s Do the '70s" collection (Criterion Channel)

It always takes about 20 years, doesn't it? During the 1970s, a '50s craze swept over pop culture — everything from TV's "Happy Days" to phenomenons like "Grease." And if you grew up in the '80s, you'll recall '60s-tinged psychedelia was everywhere, particularly in the purple haze of Prince. To their credit, when the '90s indie auteurs decided to throw back to the Nixon, Ford and Carter eras, it wasn't always celebratory. "The Ice Storm" is jaundiced by parental irresponsibility and bad sex in chilly cars. Todd Haynes' Bowie-inspired "Velvet Goldmine" presents glam rock as freeing, but also a movement of deep alienation. Both movies are brilliant and both come to Criterion this month, along with the breakthrough film of the director of the moment: Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights." He's about to win a ton of Oscars in a couple of months. Return to his disco-drenched 1997 Valley comedy and be shocked once again at how much pain he puts his lovable porn stars through. — Joshua Rothkopf

"Neil & Martin's Bon Voyage" (Acorn)

In which, Neil Morrissey drives Martin "Doc Martin" Clunes, with whom he co-starred in the '90s U.K. sitcom "Men Behaving Badly," around France, his "second home," "to go on a little trip while we can still walk — unaided." It's a kind of jollier, goofier, less expensive, nonfictional version of the Steve Coogan-Rob Brydon "The Trip," minus the passive-aggression and Michael Caine imitations, plus a touch of Eugene Levy's "The Reluctant Traveler." Taking in mostly rural, out-of-the-way sights and getting involved in local events and customs, they ride horses and bikes, paddle down the Dordogne River to a deep-underground wine cellar, muck out grape skins from giant wine vats, play pétanque with villagers, paint each other's portrait in Arles, go fishing, participate in (very) small-town "corn Olympics" (shucking it, spitting it) and talk old times — generally (says Clunes) "being facetious and trying to make each other laugh." (They play with their food.) Nice scenery, to boot. — Robert Lloyd

Guest spot

A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they're working on — and what they're watching

If you think returning to work after the holidays is disorienting, imagine losing eight years of memories and trying to rebuild a life. Fox's "Doc" tells the story of Amy Larsen (Parker), a brilliant doctor rebuilding her life after suffering a traumatic brain injury from a car crash that results in her losing nearly a decade of her memory. When the drama returned this week for Season 2's mid-season premiere, the aftermath of the cyberattack at Westside Hospital — a revenge plot designed to leak damaging audio of the memory-challenged doctor's therapy sessions — caused emotional turmoil and endangered a patient. Over a recent video call, Parker talked about the fallout from the cyberattack storyline and the reality show that has her hooked. — Yvonne Villarreal

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Let's dig into this week's mid-season premiere. The hack, the recording and the cliffhanger. Hannah and Charlie have not been uncovered, but it's clear Hannah has her misgivings about the whole thing and is feeling some guilt. What can you tease about where things are headed?

Inevitably, they are going to be found out. One of the main themes this season, certainly the second half of the season, is Amy having to contend with unreliable narrators around her past. One of the things I love about the way the writers have set her up is that, in the aftermath of her son's death, she became a person who was incredibly self-sufficient and shut down the feeling part of herself because it was too painful. When she has her accident, she becomes a person who has to rely on other people to tell her the basic facts of her life. Depending on others has been the thing she couldn't do and, yet, the ability to do that and be vulnerable is what makes it possible for her to have true connection to the people around her again; to really be in relationships with her daughter, with her best friend, with Jake, as we see it going forward, and even with Michael. However, now again, she has been gaslit by people who tell her one thing about her past or don't tell her and she will come to find out it's not what was shared with her. It's one of the the challenges of having amnesia. Who do you trust? Even the people who have the best of intentions in Amy's life, they have a version of her. Michael has an idea of who she is. We're different with different people in our lives. It's a great puzzle. I think of the show as almost like a detective story. Amy really is a detective in her own life. She has to put all these clues together on a daily basis to try to figure out who she is.

Two seasons in, how are you figuring out how to approach Amy's mindset? She is in this mental limbo — she's in discovery mode, relearning things, figuring things out. But there's also memories coming back, and she's figuring out how reliable those are. How does that complicate or enrich your understanding of this complicated character?

I couldn't do this job without our script supervisor. For non-film and television people, there's a crew position called the script supervisor — it used to be called the continuity [supervisor] — but it's about so much more than remembering if your hair was tucked or not tucked when you walked out of the room. There's an emotional continuity. In our case, there is also a very complicated and constantly evolving historic continuity. There are flashbacks that are Amy's flashbacks. Sometimes there are flashbacks that are just for the audience, so that they have more information than Amy has when she's figuring things out. It takes a lot of people to keep it straight.

I will be like, "Well, how would she know that if she didn't see that?" And they go, "Oh my God, you're right." That doesn't happen often, but it happens. It's really complicated and I love that. I don't want to be bored at work. I want to be challenged. It's not that she's the most complicated person I've played, but it is the most complicated bit of storytelling that I've done. And it's 22 episodes, so it's a marathon. You've just finished the episode and the next day, you have a new director, and you start the next one with a new script. That is the day, always, that I am the most terrified of because that's the day when I'm like, "I have to already have all the pieces in my mind," because it's not like you shoot things in script order. It's kind of insane.

Felicity Huffman joined Season 2 as Joan, who was Amy's teacher and advocate. What intrigues you about the dynamic between Amy and Joan? Amy has to learn to be the doctor she was again — we see how Joan is trying to help Amy, but she's also an obstacle.

When the writers were first talking to me about the season and talked about this character, who was this mentor-teacher of Amy's, and then this other character, Hannah [Amy's mentee] — I really love the weird parallels or diagonal line. I love that you get to see the generational shifts in how women operate at work. [With Joan], we see somebody who has had to be tough to get to where she's gotten to. But she's also such a fascinating character because she's not just this hard ass; she's lived this huge, huge life. What she hasn't done is prioritized her family, which Amy was doing. I think that was something Amy was doing before [her son] Danny died, and it meant that Amy probably was never going to be chief. It wasn't that she wasn't ambitious, but it wasn't ambition for authority and power. Because Joan has her own secrets, we are not ever fully able to trust that she is purely doing what is best for Amy, and yet she so clearly loves her and believes in her in a different way than the other people in Amy's life. When we see Amy again at the beginning of Season 2, she's really dug herself into a hole in her relationship with Michael, Jake and Gina. She tried to be the person they all want her to be and yet, in the end, she failed. She's carrying around a lot of shame at the beginning of Season 2; then Joan shows up and says, "You did the best you could. In fact, you became this extraordinary doctor." This is the first time Amy's heard this since her accident. It's like, "Oh, somebody besides Jake actually liked me back then." Amy really needs that kind of voice at this point.

It's such a wonderful opportunity to look at the way women have felt they have to behave and be to be acceptable in the workplace and to get ahead.

To expand on show's themes on women and their careers and their relationship to ambition — at this point in your life and career, how have your priorities or perspective as it relates to that shifted or evolved?

I have a 19-year-old son — my only child — and he just finished his first semester away in college. That was a major shift in my life. The reality of doing a job, of having a career, and being a mother is tremendously difficult. You always feel like you're failing somewhere. Also, the job I do means I have to travel for work. I have to be away. We had rules. I'd never go more than a few days without seeing him. The last six months is the first time in 20 years that I have felt like I don't have to climb a mountain on the weekend after I've just worked 75 hours in order to get on a plane and go home and be there for my son, which I did for years. It was so hard and so worth it, because I was really present in my son's life, but it's the first time I haven't felt that anxiety and guilt in 20 years. I can be at work and just work and just take care of that. It feels really earned too. I'm so happy to be where I am in my life.

"Doc" is a show that experienced a Netflix boost when the first season dropped on the streamer last fall. When did you realize that it was finding new viewers? And as a performer, what are your thoughts on how the streaming and linear model feed into each other?

It's been fascinating to watch. When I was offered this role and considering doing it, I really didn't think that they would want to do so many [episodes]. I worked, essentially, for HBO, then Netflix, for the last 15 years. I've had this completely different experience. But what I have had — because I've done so many things for Netflix — is the experience of its reach. When we did "Lost in Space," we literally flew around the world doing a press tour — In Dubai, Japan — and people were watching it in all these countries, and it was so far out.

When we started shooting [Season 2 of "Doc"], it was just after that that they made the Netflix deal. You're like, "Oh, OK, that's different." I guess that's what we're seeing — it's not going to be one or the other. It really is going to be both together, working in different ways. For television, particularly for network television, which used to have to perform in a way that was so unrealistic — you had to put together these number of viewers that watched the first episode and then the second episode, and if they weren't numbers that were big enough, that's it. Fox, to their credit, they are making very few shows. It feels strangely intimate and personable and it really matters to them. To have the opportunity to give a show enough time to reach an audience is what Netflix can do. It's what a great streamer can do. All shows need that kind of opportunity, especially now, to grow into themselves.

What have you watched recently that you are recommending to everyone you know?

I'm married to a cinematographer, Sam McCurdy; he won the Emmy last year for "Shōgun." We just finished the British version of "Traitors" [Peacock]. I love that show. She's [host Claudia Winkleman] hilarious. The whole thing is just hilarious. I've been doing to a lot of "The Rest Is History," [a podcast]. That is fantastic. I've listened to hundreds of them. It's fascinating and entertaining — and puts me to sleep when I can't sleep and keeps me interested when I'm cleaning the house.

What's your go-to "comfort watch," the movie or TV show you go back to again and again?

I will say, just because of this time of year, I watch "It's A Wonderful Life" [Prime Video] every Christmas. It's a perfect film. I will watch it again. That is a real comfort moment for me. "The Big Lebowski" — again and again and again.