It's the news we've been waiting for: George Clooney is returning for the 15th and final series of ER. Paediatrician Doug Ross is one of many characters set to waltz again through the emergency room of County General. Also set for a guest appearance is Julianna Margulies as Nurse Carol Hathaway (who married the priapic Dr Ross/aka George Clooney/aka My Future Husband) and bore him twins. That nice Dr Mark Green is returning too, but as a ghost.
Like Casualty, its UK counterpart, ER was forged in reality, that is scriptwriter (and former doctor) Michael Crichton's harrowing experiences in a genuine emergency room. And like Casualty, it originally had an incisive political edge, teaching Brits about the horrors of healthcare for poor, un-or-under-insured Americans, teenage pregnancy ("babies havin' babies") and some searing depictions of gang war in Chicago, with bullets flying and blood flowing.
Amongst other innovations, ER taught us that a gurney is a trolley, while we are now accustomed to, and indeed expect, gorgeous doctors in peach or pistachio coloured "scrubs" (our medics now also wear those ice cream colours) to come frantically crashing through swing doors in a blinding flash of theme tune and strobe.
Another development was in terms of character. These doctors were rarely saintly. My abiding memory is the unlikely exit of prickly "attending" and flamboyant homophobe Dr "Rocket" Romano, hit twice by a helicopter. (The first severed his arm, the next killed him. It was his destiny.) Waspish lesbian Dr Kerry Weaver's revenge was justified, poetic and sublime: she founded the Dr Romano Clinic for Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered Patients from money he bequeathed, absolutely the direct opposite of what he would have wanted.
ER even forced cosy old Casualty to raise its game, albeit briefly. But then both shows dissolved into unlikely, histrionic romances, trips abroad to a studio-bound "Africa" and ER's calling card: the gut-wrenching single hander.
As the lights go off in County General, let's remember ER fondly for the innovative slash editing and the copious steadicam footage following the harassed, heart-broken, underpaid, exhausted but beautiful doctors as they bark for an "IV Push? Stat!"
But the most dangerous legacy of all is this: British people who dial 911, not 999.
