A new hospital drama has burst onto the Netflix scene and it is exactly what you never knew you were waiting for! One part ER, one part Grey’s Anatomy and one part entirely its own, New Amsterdam is engaging, sincere and jam packed with a delightful cast.

Based on the book Twelve Patients: Life and Death in Bellevue Hospital by Eric Manheimer, New Amsterdam opens as a new medical director breaths new life into the oldest public hospital in the United States. Filled with new ideas and an unconventional approach to hospital administration, Dr. Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold) starts his new chapter at the hospital by promptly firing every doctor in the cardiology department, save one. Dr. Floyd Reynolds (Jocko Sims) is promoted to head of the department while he, and the rest of the department heads, scrambles to find his bearings in the ever-changing landscape at New Amsterdam.

Despite his drastic decisions early on, Goodwin wins over the staff with his inexhaustible optimism and unwavering commitment to patient care. A champion for his staff and a proponent of solutions that make sense, he quickly earns the loyalty and affection of his team of department heads and together they begin to reshape New Amsterdam into a beacon of hope and health in their city.

Eggold does a fantastic job of embodying the energetic Dr. Goodwin. His boyish good looks and utterly guileless presentation endears him to viewers from the start. But Eggold isn’t the only on-screen treasure here; the whole cast is pretty impressive.

Janet Montgomery, as Dr. Lauren Bloom, Freema Agyeman as Dr. Helen Sharpe, Tyler Labine as Dr. Iggy Frome and Anupam Kher as Dr. Vijay Kapoor round out the leads in this drama. Each character is skillfully fleshed out by a team of talented writers and brought to life in an earnest and believable way by the superb cast of actors, each episode building on the team’s back stories while effortlessly moving the narrative forward one patient at a time.

Filming for the series takes place in New York City and makes use of a number of unoccupied and unstaffed wings of area hospitals by renting them out for production. This added revenue has been a boost to the New York state health care system. Interestingly, at the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic in April 2020, production of the series had to shut down due to state regulations, cutting the season short. In response, producers donated the show’s supply of personal protective equipment to the state’s front line medical personnel.

This little show with a big heart is entirely bingeworthy. It’s got a bit of cheese to it, but that’s okay. It somehow adds to the charm of the whole thing. So, set aside some time, settle in and get to know the good doctors of New Amsterdam.