Italy’s Lux Vide, the production company behind “Medici” and financial thriller “Devils,” is now scoring a global hit with its medical procedural “Doc,” the second season of which had its French launch at the Series Mania fest.
“Doc,” which turns on a prominent physician who, following a head injury, suffers a permanent partial memory loss but still finds a new way to practice his profession, has been sold as a ready made to a slew of territories, including Australia, Canada, Venezuela, the Netherlands and Nigeria. The Italian version has already aired in France (TF1), Australia (SBS), Spain (AXN) and Portugal (AXN), while a local adaptation played in the Czech Republic.
The “Doc” format, as previously reported, has been sold by Lux Vide to Sony Pictures Television for global distribution. And SPT Studios is developing a U.S. adaptation of the show.
In Italy, the final episode of “Doc” Season 2 aired on pubcaster RAI’s flagship RAI-1 station last week to a record more than 30% audience share.
Praised by Italian media as a mix of “House” and “The Good Doctor,” albeit with a distinctive flair, “Doc” is “a highbrow drama with a strong concept,” says Lux Vide chief Luca Bernabei, adding that those basic elements are “what makes the show international,” even in its Italian version.
For Lux Vide, “Doc” marks the company’s first foray in the medical show genre. They took the plunge because it’s based on a true story, which gives the concept credibility “but also makes it difficult,” says Bernabei. He notes that Lux Vide now has a team of in-house writers and story editors who have honed “a very sophisticated narrative mechanism” for this show.
The first season introduces “Doc” protagonist Dr. Andrea Fanti, played by Luca Argentero (“Eat Pray Love”). He is the former head of the internal medicine unit at a top Milan hospital who has suffered a gunshot wound that erased 12 years of his memory.
Because of this amnesia, Dr. Fanti had to rebuild his life, step by step. We see him rediscover the beauty of working in the ward. Being a patient has revolutionized his approach to medical care: he has abandoned the cold and detached attitude he once had, to become an empathetic doctor, completely dedicated to listening to the patient. “The fact that he’s been sick himself has opened a new way of practicing medicine for him,” says Bernabei.
But though he has gone back to work, “Doc,” as everyone calls Dr. Fanti, has not been fully reintegrated into the hospital staff. Given his particular condition, he can only be a simple medical assistant.
At the end of the first season, Doc is torn between two women: Agnese, the wife from whom he did not remember having divorced, and whom he continues to love, and Giulia, a former assistant with whom he discovers that, prior to being shot in the head, he had started a relationship that’s been completely erased from his mind.
The second season of “Doc” folds the COVID-19 pandemic into the narrative and the devastating effect it had on the city of Milan. But without dwelling on the most critical phase of the health emergency; jumping ahead to Milan’s ongoing return to normality and hope.
Throughout, what remains a constant is Dr. Fanti’s new philosophy of practicing medicine and of trying to find ways to cure even rare diseases that are considered uncurable.
“There is a detection [process] to discover the cause of a disease,” says Bernabei, who adds that “this is also very interesting for the audience.”
“‘House,’ ‘The Good Doctor’ and ‘Doc’ all have this in common: these three doctors are like three detectives,” says Bernadei.
“It’s a new type of medical show that works because it’s a sub-genre that is actually a crime/detection sub-genre; except it isn’t about violence, but rather about disease,” he notes.