‘Boston Med’ finds humanity in the hospital

June 24, 2010|Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff

Unless you have Munchausen syndrome, or you’re a “Grey’s Anatomy’’ addict, you probably aren’t thrilled by the sight of IV poles, exam gloves, and steel gurneys. Generally speaking, childbirth aside, you’re not visiting a hospital unless you or someone you care about is sick. It hardly seems inviting to call ABC’s new docu-series “Boston Med’’ an honest, unvarnished look at hospital life.

But truly there can be something rich and lovely about hospitals, and there is something rich and lovely about “Boston Med.’’ Hospitals are where doctors and nurses and patients rise to heroic moment, where people find perspective about what and who really matter to them. In hospitals, life is at stake, from the tragedy of a fatal stabbing to the rebirth of a woman whose lungs are quickly failing. Life happens in double and triple time in those long, sterile, white-lit halls, and “Boston Med’’ effectively captures that raw human intensity.

The eight-part series, which premieres tonight at 10 on Channel 5, is produced by Terence Wrong of the extraordinary Baltimore hospital docu-series “Hopkins’’ in 2008. Like “Hopkins,’’ “Boston Med’’ is a respectful portrait of caregivers and patients in extreme situations, chiseled down from miles of footage. There is no cheesy narration or fanciful editing imposed onto the material; the series is closer to documentary-style storytelling than the forced arcs of reality TV. Wrong throws in a few unnecessary dramatic flourishes — a doctor fighting to make his daughter’s recital, for example. But mostly, the episodes jump among both routine and unusual cases at three local institutions — Mass. General, Brigham and Women’s, and Children’s Hospital — without hokey manipulations.

The show’s most news-making material comes in the final episode, with the country’s second face-transplant surgery. Wrong and his film crews capture both the case of Joseph Helfgot, who died after heart-transplant surgery, and the case of James Perry Maki, who receives Helfgot’s face after his own was severely damaged in a third rail accident. There are many big scenes in this story line — Helfgot talking about his love for his wife, Susan Whitman-Helfgot; her meeting with Maki after the surgery that gave him her late husband’s face; Maki’s first look in the mirror; Maki meeting another face-transplant recipient. But none of these moments seems artificially sweetened. These “characters’’ aren’t actors, like those on reality TV, and awkwardness is sometimes in the air.