Diving Into ‘The Good Doctor’
Photo: ABC
The Good Doctor is a riff on the medical tear-jerker, one of linear TV’s most enduringly popular genres, that’s both fresh and familiar. Freddie Highmore’s committed portrayal of a doctor with autism and savant syndrome has won over television viewers who are anything but new to stories about eccentric geniuses whose unique talents force them to shoulder unique burdens.
One thing that sets The Good Doctor apart is its success as a stand-alone series. It has earned solid ratings from its 2017 debut to today, when many of the most popular scripted shows on broadcast TV have been on the air for at least a decade. That makes the question of what comes next even more pressing for ABC than it might be for, say, Station 19, another drama ending this year, and which happens to be a spinoff of medical drama mainstay Grey’s Anatomy. You can always make another spinoff, but replacing an original series like The Good Doctor isn’t so easy.
So how does ABC produce a new show for its prime-time lineup that can fill the void left by The Good Doctor? To answer that question, we’re using Ranker Insights to find out what it is about the show that fans love, as well as the other shows they’re more likely to also watch.
Season 7 of The Good Doctor premieres February 20 on ABC.
What Do Fans Love About The Good Doctor?
Photo: ABC
By looking at the Ranker lists where The Good Doctor ranks particularly high, we can get a sense of not just how popular the show is, but also why it’s popular. For instance, it’s ranked #1 on The 30 Best Medical TV Shows On Now (15K votes) and #2 on The 50 Best Medical Drama Shows (81K votes), which also features shows no longer on the air, suggesting that it excels with fans of the genre. These are highly competitive lists voted on by people who love this category of TV, which means any series replacing The Good Doctor should also excel at hitting all the dramatic and structural notes that make the genre familiar to viewers.
That said, there’s also something worth taking away from The Good Doctor’s #2 ranking on The Best Current ABC Shows (52K votes). The only show above it, The Rookie, and the show directly after it, Abbott Elementary, have little in common with each other or The Good Doctor — except for the fact that they’re both new series rather than spinoffs of old successes. ABC has to find a show that can walk the tightrope between familiarity and originality to re-create the success The Good Doctor has enjoyed for nearly six years.
Another interesting inference we can draw from these rankings: The Good Doctor is big with viewers of ABC and Hulu, but is favored more by broadcast viewers. The show sits at #2 on The Best Medical Dramas On Hulu, under The Resident, a Fox show that regularly got worse ratings than its ABC rival throughout its six-season run. That goes to show how different streaming and broadcast audiences are, and that The Good Doctor appeals more to the latter.
Who’s Reaching Fans of The Good Doctor?
These rankings explain plenty about the factors that attract so many people to The Good Doctor. But if ABC is looking for a show that can play a similar role in its prime-time lineup, it might be even more instructive to look at the other shows Good Doctor fans are watching on broadcast TV. Taken together, all this information can guide the network in its efforts to produce a worthy replacement for one of its most popular medical dramas.
NBC
The fact that Chicago Med, the NBC show most likely to appeal to Good Doctor fans, is also a medical drama is no great shock. What’s a little surprising to us is that it’s part of a TV franchise — Chicago Med is a spinoff of Chicago Fire, and both belong to the Dick Wolf-produced “One Chicago” franchise that takes up the whole of NBC’s Wednesday night lineup. That said, New Amsterdam is nearly as likely to draw in Good Doctor fans. Meanwhile, the fact that these viewers are 4X more likely to also love This Is Us indicates this audience is looking for drama, even if that drama doesn’t take place inside a hospital.
Fans of The Good Doctor also like… Chicago Med, New Amsterdam, This Is Us
FOX
Both these shows are hit medical dramas on Hulu, so it makes sense that fans of The Good Doctor are 7X more likely to also love The Resident, even if they competed on different networks for much of their respective runs. House, which also streams on Hulu, is a modern classic of the genre, and the fact that it shares a co-creator in David Shore makes its connection to The Good Doctor even less surprising. Finally, the show is 2X more likely to connect with viewers of Bones — it may not technically be a medical show, but it shares a focus on characters on the autism spectrum, albeit unofficially.
Fans of The Good Doctor also like… The Resident, House, Bones
CBS
Code Black hasn’t had the same kind of run as The Good Doctor, but it still stands out for our audience, which is 3X more likely than the average voter to like it. Other CBS hits Good Doctor viewers are more likely to check out include Young Sheldon and NCIS, suggesting that although these viewers may prefer fresh, original medical shows, they’ve got nothing against spinoffs or long-running blockbuster series within other genres.
Fans of The Good Doctor also like… Code Black, Young Sheldon, NCIS