IN HARM'S WAY
First Published on Emmy Magazine
THE REAL-LIFE SURGEON PORTRAYED IN PEACOCK’S DR. DEATH PUT EGO OVER ETHICS, TO SHOCKING RESULT. STAR JOSHUA JACKSON AND SHOWRUNNER PATRICK MACMANUS HOPE THE LIMITED SERIES WILL SPUR CHANGES THAT STRENGTHEN PATIENT SAFETY AND REDUCE THE RISK OF HARM.
It’s the sound effects that stick with you. The deep sucking noise of a spinal disc yanked from its vertebral column. The shrill grinding of metal drilling into bone. The ghastly clanking of a mallet against cartilage. And this is the restrained version of Peacock’s Dr. Death that Patrick Macmanus envisioned when he set out to adapt the hit Wondery podcast about Texas neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch, who is serving a life sentence after maiming and killing multiple patients.
“With the very first draft of the pilot, I said to the writers, we’re going to see it all — the viscera, the blood,” says Macmanus, showrunner and executive producer of the limited series. “My original intent was a gore fest at the very top.” His fellow writers persuaded him to back-end most of the blood and guts.
“It’s the shark under the water, versus the shark on the surface of the water,” he says.
The eight-episode series stars Joshua Jackson as Dr. Duntsch and Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater as Drs. Robert Henderson and Randall Kirby, the surgeons who spearheaded an initially Sisyphean effort to get Duntsch’s medical license revoked.
But if Macmanus, Jackson and the rest of the cast and crew have done their job, viewers should be mad as hell at the systemic failures in the American healthcare system that allowed Duntsch to keep performing surgeries at three hospitals between 2011 and 2013, even as he was maiming and killing patients.
“It’s a system that is neither good for doctors — who have to carry massive weights of [malpractice] insurance — nor for patients who, God forbid something goes wrong, are facing a system that will crush them rather than fix them,” Jackson says.
It is an indictment of a uniquely American healthcare industry that prioritizes profit over patient care.