A revival of the beloved medical comedy ‘Scrubs’ has officially been put into development at US network ABC, with many of the original cast ready to return, alongside creator Bill Lawrence.
The original series, which ran from 2001-2010, followed the lives of the employees at the fictional Sacred Heart Hospital. It starred Zach Braff as Dr. John “J.D.” Dorian, Donald Faison as Dr. Christopher Turk, J.D.’s best friend and surgeon, John C. McGinley as Dr. Perry Cox, J.D.’s “mentor”, Sarah Chalke as Dr. Elliot Reid, Judy Reyes as Nurse Carla Espinosa, and Neil Flynn as the “Janitor”.
Currently, Braff, Faison, McGinley, and Chalke are said to be signed up to return. There are question marks over whether Reyes will come back as she is currently a series regular on ABC’s breakout hit ‘High Potential’, however, it has been suggested she could possibly do both shows.
News of a ‘Scrubs’ revival have been circulating for a while, but there was one major hurdle which ABC had to sort out before it could officially go into development. Whilst creator Bill Lawrence was very keen to do the revival, he is currently under an exclusive overall deal with Warner Bros TV, meaning Disney’s ABC and WBD’s WBTV needed to come to some agreement to allow Lawrence to work for them. That issue has apparently now been resolved.
Whilst Lawrence won’t serve as day-to-day showrunner on the potential new series, many of the original creative team behind the cameras are also lined up to return. Lawrence himself is already pretty busy juggling four shows – A new Steve Carell comedy for HBO, ‘Shrinking’ and ‘Bad Monkey’ for Apple TV+, and a potential 4th Season of global hit comedy ‘Ted Lasso’, also for Apple.
The new sow is said to be part revival/part reboot, picking up with the original cast a decade and a half after the series ended, but also adding in a new set of interns. Fans of the comedy will remember that this was, sort of, tried in the ill-fated 9th Season of the original show, but fell flat. However, this time around, with some distance from the original, and a better balance of original and new cast, it might just work much better.
Speaking to Deadline back in October, Lawrence commented about their decision to bring in some new blood alongside the original cast. “A: people wanting to see what the world of medicine was like for the people they love, which is part of any successful reboot. But B: I think that show always worked because you get to see young people dropped into the world of medicine, knowing young people that go there are super idealistic and are doing it because it’s a calling. There’s no cliché ‘rich doctors playing golf’ — that’s not what it is anymore. So I think that, no matter what it is, it would be a giant mistake not to do as a combo of those two things.”
The ‘Scrubs’ revival is currently classed as “in development” so might not go to series, but we’ll let you know if and when we hear more.
