Most True-To-Life TV Shows

By Julia Bianco on April 13, 2014

Television shows about lawyers and doctors are some of the most popular shows on TV right now, with new shows trying to find a different spin on the traditional formats every pilot season. Each time, the professions become more and more exaggerated— sexy lawyers, mentally unstable doctors, just general pandemonium. At this point, most of the shows on television don’t even come close to accurately representing the professions they’re based on.

Of course, most viewers don’t know that, and, a lot of time, this can be a huge hassle for the people in those professions.

“Lawyers are the most hated profession in the world today,” said Michael Asimow, professor of Law Emeritus at the University of California: Los Angeles School of Law. “It wasn’t always that way. This hatred of lawyers is very much reflected in pop culture. What the public thinks about lawyers is a pretty important subject for lawyers.”

This sentiment, which is also frequently felt by doctors, reflects one of the dangerous aspects of television. Because of the negative and irresponsible portrayals that these professions are given, many people feel distrust for them or choose not to use their services. In reality, though, most doctors and lawyers are just that— normal people with a job, who are usually just trying to help.

Some TV shows, though, actually manage to do a good job of portraying these professions. These shows, which usually feature more down-to-earth plots, are surprisingly adept at crossing the line between being accurate and creating engaging plots for the viewers.

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On the legal side, one of the most accurate TV shows is a bit surprising— long-running drama Law and Order. The show, which was ranked number one on Law School Podcaster’s list of most accurate legal shows, does a good job of creating interesting and yet realistic cases, with the types of details that real lawyers would actually use in a court room.

“The plotline focused more on cases ripped from criminal law and criminal procedure casebooks than cases ripped from the headlines,” said Taunya Banks, Jacob A. France Professor of Equality Jurisprudence at the University of Maryland School of Law. “Over all its seasons, this show accurately reflects the tensions inherent in the prosecution of criminal cases—the delicate balance between the prosecutor, the police and politicians.”

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Also ranked high on Law School Podcast’s list were 1960’s drama The Defenders, and L.A. Law. At the bottom of the list, the worst legal shows included daytime judging shows Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown, which both portray very exaggerated ideas of legal systems that don’t rely on evidence.

“Television portrays lawyers as primarily interested in their own advancement, in winning, and in their current romantic interest,” said professor of the practice of law at Duke University Donald Beskind. “Real professionals work long hours with great focus on serving their clients within the ethical rules of the profession.”

On the medical side, things are a bit more complicated. Many medical shows do a good job of portraying the actual medical details, with doctors who work on the show to confirm that those things are accurate. However, most of them do a horrible job of showing the outside lives of doctors, showing on-call room hook-ups and dramatic encounters with old flames instead of the normal, busy lives that most doctors live.

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However, there is one show that most doctors acknowledge does a good job of showing the process and steps to becoming a doctor, while also accurately showing real cases and the real life problems that many young doctors face. The show, long running comedy series Scrubs, isn’t what you’d expect when you think of a realistic portrayal, with its crazy jokes and cut-away gags. However, according to most doctors, even J.D.’s ridiculous imagination and internal monologues are fairly accurate in describing what a young doctor would be feeling.

“He says exactly what a resident feels, day in or day out. ‘Am I hurting the patient? Am I learning what I should? Am I kissing up too much to the attending?’” said Jonathan Samuels, an attending rheumatologist at the NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases.  “I always thought Scrubs was right on.”

One of the reasons that Scrubs does such a great job at portraying the medical profession is that it is based on the real life experiences of creator Bill Lawrence’s friend Jonathan Doris, who is a cardiologist living in Los Angeles. Doris also served as a medical advisor on the show.

Lawrence was also very interested in talking to other doctors in order to find stories for the show that were based in real life. Every season, he had his writers interview five doctors in order to get story ideas, meaning that almost all of the storylines were things that actually happened.

Some of the less medically accurate shows include Grey’s Anatomy, which often portrays crazy situations, E.R., which frequently shows doctors doing the work that would normally be done by nurses, and House, whose crazy cases are often medically inaccurate.

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