Scrubs: the cast’s chemistry still carries this zinger-packed comeback

I can believe contradictory things. I think TV’s reliance on revivals is a risk-averse creative regression, yet I love them — especially when characters have visibly aged. I got that feeling with the new series of Scrubs (Disney+, from Thursday 26 February), a show I once mainlined on E4.

In its bones it was a coming-of-age workplace bromance between junior doctors JD and Turk, played by Zach Braff and Donald Faison; their chemistry was the show’s anchor. The writers shake things up. JD has become a private doctor for the affluent and elderly — “You write scripts in the suburbs,” Turk sneers.

Braff directs the first episode, where a problem with a pampered patient brings him back to Sacred Heart and to old comrades: Elliot, the Todd and an emotional Turk, who is suffering burnout. Dr Cox, now a father of four, shocks in theatre: “I wish this guy would die all at once, instead of in tiny little pieces.” John C McGinley remains electrifying, his putdowns delivered in sentences longer than those of a 19th-century novelist.

United Kingdom

scrubs, zach braff, donald faison, mcginley, dr cox, turk, elliot, sacred heart, disney+, revivals