The World of Medical Drama: Television, Healthcare, and Society in a Global Perspective

Medical drama is one of the most enduring and culturally permeable genres in contemporary television. This volume brings together ten contributions that investigate its narrative forms, production logics, and relationship with social discourse across American, Italian, and Chinese contexts. Drawing on the analytical framework developed within a national research project (PRIN), the essays examine how serial narratives engage with socially complex themes such as reproductive rights, gender dynamics, healthcare access, and public health crises. The volume also documents a significant methodological shift: the integration of large language models into the analysis of serial corpora spanning approximately one thousand episodes over two decades. From the genealogy of the genre between ER and The Pitt to the forensic turn in Italian crime series, from abortion representation in US dramas to the negotiation between entertainment and state discourse in Chinese medical television, the contributions map the medical drama as a privileged site where fictional seriality and social discursiveness converge. The collection extends the ecosystem approach beyond its original case study, outlining new directions for the study of serial media at large.