Critic Reviews

What makes “The Pitt” worth watching are its characters. .... Creatively, “The Pitt” succeeds by any measure.

When it’s cooking along, “The Pitt” sweeps you up. You don’t need to be a revolutionary to make good TV, and it’s nice to see a show made with such a strong core. People need help, and capable professionals are here to provide it.

Everything is very taut if superficial. Among its draws is that Dick Wolf is an executive producer of the show. .... The abbreviated running time for “On Call” works mostly to its advantage, the current sweeping you along without time to get too distracted by, say, Lori Loughlin playing a lieutenant. This also helps the show feel less formulaic than it truly is, its rhythms less predictable.

On Call has a nice pace to it, and the performances of Bellisario and Larracuente are understated and effective. Sure, it’s a police procedural, but at least its format and subject matter are a little different than what we normally see.

Overall, On Call has its merits, especially when it comes to the portrayal of Harmon and Diaz's partnership. The main characters anchor this procedural, which doesn't answer all the questions that it lays out from the pilot onward. Yet the tension between Harmon and her colleagues isn't explored enough, and neither is Harmon's drive to seek justice for Delgado.

With so many subjects and so little time given to developing them, it means suffering through a whole lot of blunt exposition and even more clichéd or half-formed characters. That may feel familiar, even comforting, to fans of broadcast dramas, which thrive by creating self-contained arcs every week, but “The Pitt” isn’t operating at a high enough level to make them work.

It doesn’t break new ground. It’s akin to “Dragnet” — nothing but the facts — or the original “Hawaii Five-0” or “Adam-12.” The real weakness is the characters’ softness and lack of complexity.

On Call’s unwillingness to engage too deeply with anything we’re seeing onscreen makes it hard to ever become totally engrossed by it. But then, not every show wants you to look that closely. Some are content humming along as background noise.

In locking its characters and, in turn, its audience within this specific patrolling time, the drama doesn’t reach its full potential. Instead of offering a compelling viewpoint, the series is stressful and often mechanical. Viewers are never let off the job, so there is limited motivation to clock in for the next episode.

Amazon Prime’s “On Call,” the latest drama from executive producer Dick Wolf, is so intent on selling audiences on the idea that police are unfairly maligned and in danger every moment, of every day, that it forgets to tell a coherent or even fitfully entertaining story.