Critic Reviews

Not for the squeamish, but a well-done new medical drama.

It can never have the immediacy of Ryan McGarry’s documentary about County/USC that inspired it, but the series does capture the film’s spirit and that is a welcome change when it comes to medical dramas. Harden, as usual, provides a strong presence, which helps anchor the show, and Guzman is a plus for any series. Code Black is worth keeping an eye on.

Action and the beginning of character development are both good signs.

It's effective at quickly making us care for these docs and particularly at orchestrating the cases of the week to an emotional (and emotionally manipulative) crescendo.

The show, based on a 2013 documentary about a real Los Angeles ER trauma bay, rings with crisp dialogue and authoritatively shouted medical jargon in sufficient quantities that you'll never be more than halfway through an episode before you're completely immersed in hypochondriac terror of what your miscreant organs are plotting against you.

It might just do the trick, if its frantic doctors can save the first episode from a deadly case of hammy dialogue.

It's a decent pilot, lacking any personality of its own at this stage, but still likely to appeal to the kind of people to which this kind of show appeals.

Code Black gets a pass. It’s not the least bit interesting, but it’s dull and predictable in a way a medical drama hasn’t been in years. Specifically, Code Black is refreshingly unsexy.

The show needs to work on building the urgency to its stories and cutting away the treacle.

The whole show is stocked with actors on Guzmán and Harden's level--pros you're never not happy to see, including William Allen Young as the hospital's longest-serving resident, and Kevin Dunn, who oversees the logistics of the ER and delivers wisecracks in his midwestern deadpan. The younger, prettier actors playing the residents--Benjamin Hollingsworth, Bonnie Somerville, Melanie Chandra, and Harry Ford among them--seem overmatched and a bit on the bland side, but that's to be expected, and if the writing on this Michael Seitzman series picks up, that could improve.