page_title: ER (TV series)
section_title: Critical reception
hierarchical_section_title: ER (TV series) / Critical reception
caption_attribution_description: Chicago Downtown (view from Sears Tower)
context_page_description: ER is an American medical drama television series created by novelist and medical doctor Michael Crichton that aired on NBC from September 19, 1994, to April 2, 2009, with a total of 331 episodes spanning 15 seasons. It was produced by Constant c Productions and Amblin Television, in association with Warner Bros. Television. ER follows the inner life of the emergency room of fictional County General Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, and various critical issues faced by the room's physicians and staff. The show is the second longest-running primetime medical drama in American television history behind Grey's Anatomy, and the 5th longest medical drama across the globe. It won 23 Primetime Emmy Awards, including the 1996 Outstanding Drama Series award, and received 124 Emmy nominations. ER won 116 awards in total, including the Peabody Award, while the cast earned four Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Ensemble Performance in a Drama Series. As of 2014, ER has grossed over $3 billion in television revenue.
context_section_description: Throughout the series ER received positive reviews from critics and fans alike. It scored 80 on Metacritic, meaning "generally favorable reviews", based on 21 critics. Marvin Kitman from Newsday gave the show a very positive review, saying: "It's like M*A*S*H with just the helicopters showing up and no laughs. E.R. is all trauma; you never get to know enough about the patients or get involved with them. It's just treat, release and move on". Richard Zoglin from Time stated that it's "probably the most realistic fictional treatment of the medical profession TV has ever presented".
  Critical reactions for ER's first season were very favorable. Alan Rich, writing for Variety, praised the direction and editing of the pilot while Eric Mink, writing for the New York Daily News, said that the pilot of ER "was urban, emergency room chaos and young, committed doctors." However some reviewers felt the episodes following the pilot did not live up to it with Mink commenting that "...the great promise of the "E.R." pilot dissolves into the kind of routine, predictable, sloppily detailed medical drama we've seen many times before."
  NBC launched the show at the same time that CBS launched its own medical drama Chicago Hope; many critics drew comparisons between the two. Eric Mink concluded that ER may rate more highly in the Nielsens but Chicago Hope told better stories, while Rich felt both shows were "riveting, superior TV fare." The Daily Telegraph wrote in 1996: "Not being able to follow what on earth is going on remains one of the peculiar charms of the breakneck American hospital drama, ER".
  In 2002, TV Guide ranked ER No. 22 on their list of "TV's Top 50 Shows", making it the second highest ranked medical drama on the list (after St. Elsewhere at #20). Also, the season 1 episode "Love's Labor Lost" was ranked No. 6 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All-Time list having earlier been ranked #3. The show also placed No. 19 on Entertainment Weekly's "New TV Classics" list. British magazine Empire ranked it No. 29 in their list of the "50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time" and said the best episode was "Hell And High Water" (Season 2, Episode 7) where "Doug Ross (George Clooney) saves a young boy from drowning during a flood." In 2012, ER was voted Best TV Drama on ABC's 20/20 special episode "Best in TV: The Greatest TV Shows of Our Time". In 2013, TV Guide ranked it No. 9 in its list of The 60 Greatest Dramas of All Time and No. 29 in its list of the 60 Best Series. In the same year, the Writers Guild of America ranked ER No. 27 in its list of the 101 Best Written TV Series Of All Time.
caption: Chicago skyline
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