Overview

One of the most popular medical dramas to land on TV screens in recent times, The Good Doctor is a show about an autistic savant who is a surgical resident at a fictional location called the San Jose St Bonaventure Hospital. At the time of writing, there are three seasons and over 50 episodes available to stream, with the show based on the South Korean series which bears the same title.

Premise

Shaun Murphy is an autistic surgeon who relocates to San Jose from Casper, Wyoming, in order to work at the San Jose St Bonaventure Hospital. The first few episodes see Dr Aaron Glassman try to persuade the board to hire Shaun. Furthermore, the audience is given insight into what made Shaun decide to become a doctor. In other scenes, Shaun sees a young boy get into an accident and uses his knowledge of the human body to help save him. Various different medical cases are seen as the episodes progress, such as a man who has an allergy condition which is causing him to have violent convulsions. 

Cast and characters

• Freddie Highmore – Dr Shaun Murphy
• Nicholas Gonzalez – Dr Neil Mendelez
• Antonia Thomas – Dr Claire Brown
• Chuku Modu – Dr Jared Kalu
• Beau Garrett – Jessica Preston
• Hill Harper – Dr Marcus Andrews
• Richard Schiff – Dr Aaron Glassman
• Tamlyn Tomita – Allegra Aoki
• Will Yun Lee – Dr Alex Park
• Fiona Gubelmann – Dr Morgan Reznick
• Christina Chang – Dr Audrey Lim
• Paige Spara – Lea Dilallo
• Jasika Nicole – Dr Carly Lever
• Dylan Kingwell – Steve Murphy
• Teryl Rothery – JL
• Chris D’Elia – Kenny
• Sheila Kelley – Debbie Wexler
• Lisa Edelstein – Dr Marina Blaize
• Daniel Dae Kim – Dr Jackson Han
• Sharon Leal – Breeze Brown
• Ricky He – Kellan Park
• Karin Konoval – Deena Petringa

Filming locations

Filming for The Good Doctor primarily took place in Vancouver, British Columbia. The exterior shots for the fictional San Jose St Bonaventure Hospital were taken at the city hall for Surrey, British Columbia. 

Production

When actor Daniel Dae Kim realised the original Korean series of The Good Doctor was doing well, he bought the rights and worked on adapting it before selling it to CBS. However, CBS did not want to create a pilot, so Kim bought back the rights and worked with Sony Pictures Television on it. David Shore, creator of Fox medical drama House, was added to the team to help with developing the series. While Shore is a showrunner, Dae Kim is an executive producer. The production companies are Sony Pictures Television and ABC Studios, along with Entermedia, Shore Z Productions and 3AD. The first series was originally ordered to pilot in January 2017, and it has been renewed up til season four at the time of writing. 

Episodes and reception

The first two seasons of The Good Doctor have 18 episodes, and the third season has 20 episodes. The viewership is quite high for each season, with over 11 million tuning into season one, over 7 million checking out season two and over 6 million viewing season three. The average approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 62%, with a consensus on the site indicating that ‘there’s still plenty of room to improve’. Meanwhile, Metacritic indicates this show has had either mixed or average reviews, with a score of 53 out of 100.