There’s good news on the horizon for fans of Dick Wolf’s Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D.. NBC has ordered the next spinoff in the franchise, Chicago Med to series just a few weeks after we began seeing the hospital staff on the small screen. In addition to Chicago Med, NBC will also have new dramas Blindspot and Heartbreaker in the lineup next season.
Chicago Med is the highest-profile of the three pickups thus far. Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D. are both doing strongly over at NBC, and both earned early renewals this year. In addition, we were able to meet the characters from the spinoff during episodes of Chicago Fire earlier this season, including a planted episode that featured a man with an airborne disease blowing himself up with a grenade in the middle of the hospital. While the plot was wild during that episode, it got people talking and it’s no real surprise NBC wants to sign on for Chicago Med full time, especially considering the network has had some trouble this year finding freshman programs that really stick.
The main cast for Chicago Med has already been put together and was including in the planted episode. Yaya DeCosta stars as Maggie Seaver, a nurse with connections to Chicago Fire’s Kelly Severide. Laurie Holden and Nick Gehlfuss will play doctors on the show. Law & Order’s S. Epatha Merkerson will play the head of the hospital, and Oliver Platt popped up in the planted episode as Dr. Daniel Charles, the brilliant but quirky head of Psychiatry who helped to calm down some angry individuals during the grenade crisis. Platt’s had a great run on TV this season between the Fire planted episode and a stint on CBS’ The Good Wife, and I can’t wait to see him back in a main role on TV again.
In other series pickup news, interestingly, NBC is adding another medical drama to the lineup. Heartbreaker will follow Dr. Alex Panttiere (Melissa George), a female heart-transplant surgeon who is one of the only women in her field. Deadline also say she will have a “racy personal life.” With McDreamy gone on Grey’s Anatomy, there’s certainly room for another medical drama in the playing field and it looks like NBC is hoping the network will be able to pull a fan-favorite out of a hat.
Finally, NBC has greenlighted Blindspot to series. The last one’s from Greg Berlanti, weirdly enough, who is mostly known for creating Arrow and The Flash for the CW. It’s about a Jane Doe who is found in Times Square, naked and covered in tattoos—a mystery that an FBI team is tasked with solving. Methinks NBC might be looking for something to pair with The Blacklist. None of this stuff will hit the schedule until this fall, but if you want to see what NBC has coming up in the meantime, here’s our summer TV premiere schedule.
Photo credit: NBC
