Fans of the NBC medical drama The Night Shift are in for some good news today. The show just got a Season 4 renewal from the network, meaning that it will be back on the schedule next year, probably in time to help fans fill in their summer viewing schedules as it did in Season 1 and Season 3.
NBC announced today that the hour-long drama will be back for Season 4, seeing as how the show managed to become the number one summer drama out of the Big 4 networks this year. The Night Shift averaged 6.8 million overall viewers in its Live +7 day rating, and remained number one in its Wednesday 10 p.m. timeslot against its regular competition from ABC and CBS in the key 18-49 demographic, as well as continuing to rank first among total viewers.
The fast-paced medical show has, unlike most medical dramas, ties to the military as well. The show has three characters who have served in our current conflicts overseas. The Night Shift focuses on Dr. TC Callahan (Eoin Macken), a former Army medic who comes to San Antonio Memorial Hospital while showing signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from watching his brother die in front of him on the battlefield. The character is known to follow his own path at the hospital, often breaking rules when it suits him and butting heads with hospital administrators and his ex-girlfriend, Dr. Jordan Alexander (Jill Flint), who is the newly promoted Chief of the Night Shift at the hospital. The show also follows the lives and cases of Dr. Topher Zia (Ken Leung), a private sector surgeon who's also a former Army Ranger, and Dr. Drew Alister (Brendan Fehr), a gay Army medic who's still active in the reserves and, at first, tries to hide his sexual orientation for fear of backlash.
NBC is surely happy with the ratings for The Night Shift and, obviously, has hopes for continued success for the show. The program is clearly a hit with viewers, and has found its niche as a summer viewing option for when new scripted offerings from the broadcast networks are still pretty scarce. This success is despite the critical reviews for the drama, which are middling at best, and almost mean at worst. The show currently only has an average rating of 4.3 out of 10 on Rotten Tomatoes, where the site consensus calls the series "calculated and cliche-ridden."
Well, as we all know by now, the thoughts of critics mean very little if a show can continue to bring in people and keep them planted in front of the TV screen week after week and season after season. And, The Night Shift has managed to do that for three seasons now. Here's hoping that they can keep up the good work into Season 4 and beyond.
