ER (TV Series)

ER (Emergency Room) is a series that has been created by novelist Michael Crichton that aired on  NBC from September 1994 to April 2009. After 15 seasons, this show became the longest-running prime-time medical drama in American television history.

Actually Michael Crichton wrote the screenplay that would become ER in 1974. He wrote it based on his own experience as a resident physician in the emergency room. Then he just forgot about this screenplay and focused on another novel Jurassic Park, and in 1993 he started to work on the Jurassic Park movie with Steven Spielberg.

One year later, Crichton and Spielberg both focused on ER, and made a two-hour pilot based on the screenplay that Crichton had written 20 years earlier.  NBC Entertainment was impressed by the series. Spielberg joined as a produced, and ER’s success surprised the networks and critics, especially since the first episode was on the air at the same time than the “Monday night Football” game on ABC, but did very well anyway. Spielberg left the show after one year as a producer.

With a total of 23 Emmy Awards, including the 1996 Outstanding Drama Series award, and 124 Emmy nominations, it still is the most of any television show in history.

ER made an impact on all its actors, but specifically on George Clooney. He started his career in 1978, but Clooney became famous by portraying Dr. Douglas “Doug” Ross during 5 years. In the mean time, he was offered a role in “Batman & Robin” in 1997, and in “Out of Sight” in 1998, his first collaboration with director Steven Soderbergh. But his first big Hollywood role was in 1996 with ”From Dusk till Dawn”, written by Quentin Tarantino. Then, in 2001, he worked with Soderbergh again in the first of a film trilogy “Ocean’s Eleven”. It was his most commercially successful movie with a gross revenue of more than $450 millions worldwide. The rest of George Clooney’s career is history.