Medical Police - Season 1
MEDICAL POLICE - NETFLIX
Despite its undeniable charm and frenetic comedic star power, Medical Police is a show that consistently demonstrates, more than anything, that it arrived roughly ten years too late. Rob Corddry, Krister Johnson, Jonathan Stern and David Wain’s witty and fast-paced spinoff to Children’s Hospital takes the spy thriller movie head-on and unnecessarily parodies a genre that has since passed its peak. As a result, NETFLIX’s latest action-comedy spy adventure is a dated excursion through spy genre tropes, supplemented by strong comedic performances and a healthy dose of hit-and-miss absurdism.
Errin Hayes and Rob Huebel bravely lead the main cast as Dr Lola Spratt and Dr Owen Maestro, respectively, two fearless but frequently inept doctors who become entangled in an international search for the creator of and cure to a deadly virus sweeping the nation. In order to stop the spread of disease and the person who caused it, they must become something greater than their original selves (i.e. cop doctors or doctor cops) and use their newly acquired skills and various governmental connections to survive in the world of espionage and save the entire human race.
The premise is simple and almost wholly ancillary to the natural comedy that comes from the novelty of these two doctors becoming cops. Hayes and Huebel are well-matched and perfectly equipped for the show’s breakneck speed and quick comedic delivery. The jokes are not constant and take a backseat to the plot when necessary, but the talents of the two lead actors and the impressive supporting cast are what shine — more so than anything else the show has to offer. The comedic writing is given life by the actors but offers little in the way of innovation, mainly when it targets the conventions of the spy genre explicitly for parody. Though the writers make acute observations about the shortcomings of that genre, it lacks originality and exhibits laziness in its construction. The show wears a thin veneer in this regard and tries as hard as it can to mask its generic and broad alt-comedy roots with the facade of witty and insightful parody.
The actors exude as much charisma as they possibly can and understand what kind of show they are in, but the writing gives them little to work within the comedy department. Every character is written the same way and given the same jokes to deliver and though this repetition is often a part of the show’s DNA, it also makes for very stale viewing after a while. Both the narrative and its style of humour are hardly enough to carry a ten-episode season and as a result, the plot or the comedy completely disappear for long periods and reappear at random. Though the narrative through-line, which is the mission to stop the virus from destroying the world, remains present across each episode, the show displays genuine disinterest toward its own story in favour of general shenanigans and low-stakes humour.
Medical Police is not a humourless parody; it has genuine moments of genius and the performances are always energetic and engrossing. Though they are never given much in terms of character development, Hayes and Huebel have sizzling comedic chemistry and give their characters personality and surface-level nuance when the script attempts to paint them in broad strokes. However, despite the actors’ best attempts to add prestige and legitimacy to the dialogue, the series displays an evident lack of self-awareness and fails to rise above the most mundane level of sitcom dreck. Medical Police is an altogether disastrous experience that exhibits glimpses of brilliance but ultimately fails to deliver on the promise of its ludicrous premise consistently.
MEDICAL POLICE Season 1 streams exclusively on NETFLIX January 10th 2020
