Since ABC’s hit series “Scrubs” ended its nine-season run in 2010, Hollywood has largely shied away from comedies set in hospitals — sometimes a hard place to find laughs — though there have been outliers like Fox and Hulu’s “The Mindy Project,” Warner Bros.’ “Children’s Hospital.” and Adult Swim and HBO’s critically acclaimed “Getting On.”

NBC is the last one he tried “St. Denis Medical,” a new sitcom that combines this provocative setting with a popular format: the mockumentary. Can Hollywood find comedy inside a hospital in 2024, especially from a show that focuses on the daily lives of hospital workers in the wake of a global pandemic?

To find out, TheWrap paid an exclusive visit to the set during the final week of filming for the show’s 18-episode first season, which premieres Nov. 12. TheWrap spoke with “St. Denis Medical” cast and creators about the creation of the comedy series. An exclusive visit to the writers’ room offered further insight into how the team balanced laughs and vulnerability with advice from medical experts, their own experiences with hospitals and plenty of off-color jokes.

“It’s a workplace comedy in the most interesting workplace you can think of,” showrunner Eric Ledgin told TheWrap. “When I’m in a hospital or meet people who work there, I’m so interested in what their lives are like – so big and dramatic. But when I talk to them, they all have funny stories… There’s a lot of tension, but also a lot of release from that tension.”

Making “St. Denis Medical” in the style of “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation”, the team must earn laughs while staying true to the serious subject matter usually associated with hospitals. NBC has a track record of launching bold comedy concepts to massive success — a pedigree that includes “The Office,” “Friends,” “30 Rock” and “Will & Grace.”

Still, in a Hollywood where the TV industry is shrinking, the network is taking a big gamble on the hospital comedy, its only one-camera comedy order of the season. The new ‘Happy’s Place’ and ‘Lopez vs. Lopez” and the returning “Night Court” all stick to the cheaper multicam format. CBS is the only other broadcaster to devote as much programming real estate to the comedy, with four shows this fall.

A visit to the doctor

In “St. Denis Medical’, cameras follow the doctors, nurses and administrators of a fictional hospital and the myriad shenanigans of their daily lives – such as caring for difficult patients, learning on the job and juggling their personal lives while save others.

The show aims to find the funny in the tragic.

On the day of TheWrap’s set visit, the cast and crew came together to bring the new medical comedy from creators Ledgin and Justin Spitzer to life. It certainly helped that many of those involved worked together on NBC comedies like “The Office,” “Superstore” and “American Auto.”

Spirits were high that September Monday as show star Wendi McLendon-Covey worked on a scene. She tried out different lines for a joke about the “cool” happenings around the Oregon hospital where the show takes place. McLendon-Covey, who plays Joyce — the hospital’s chief executive — brought it home each time with a different, laugh-out-loud reaction to an unsolicited health update from one of her colleagues.

“I don’t know if it’s because I’m not running this one, so it’s easier, but it feels like everything is going so well for a first-season show,” Spitzer, who created “Superstore” and “American” . Auto,” said TheWrap. “The first few seasons, you kind of get the hang of (the show), and season 2 is where you’re firing on all cylinders. God willing we’ll get a second season, but it looks like we figured it out really early this time.”

Ledgin, who was a writer and producer on Spitzer’s “Superstore” and “American Auto,” made the jump to showrunner with this new series. “I feel so proud of what I’ve done and I feel so exhausted, which I think you should feel at the end of your first show,” he said.

The showrunner said he wanted to capture the range of emotions that go through a typical day at the hospital. “I spent a lot of time in hospitals when I was in my 20s – not for myself, but for someone I was very close to – I had a lot of laughs and also had some very difficult times,” he said. “And this season of the show, I ended up in the hospital for three days. There’s something that felt very personal about being able to reflect on life in a hospital setting.”

It’s that challenge that drew top talent like Allison Tolman and David Alan Grier to the project.

“I was really surprised to find a sitcom that I was excited about,” Tolman, who previously starred in “Fargo” and “Good Girls,” told TheWrap. “The situations are so silly and the goal is to get these big laughs, but the way we do it feels really authentic to me.”

“People laugh at funerals,” added veteran sitcom actor Grier, who made his name on “In Living Color.” “People literally laugh during war when there are bodies around them. It’s the human psyche, how we survive.”

Casting was “the hardest part”

Workplace comedies are only as good as their ensembles, and Ledgin admitted that finding the right talent was “the hardest part of making the whole show”. He recalled watching hundreds of tapes after the casting department narrowed the candidates down from “thousands”.

All that hard work paid off. “Superstore” veterans Kaliko Kauahi and Josh Lawson, “Jury Duty” star Mekki Leeper and “Cocaine Bear” standout Kahyun Kim round out the list of series regulars for “St. Denis Medical,” with McLendon-Covey, Tolman and Grier. Their chemistry is palpable from episode 1, with Joyce as the neurotic but fearless hospital leader, Grier’s Ron as the edgy and funny ER doctor, and Tolman’s Alex as the supervising ER nurse — and the show’s emotional core.

Each member of the ensemble relished the chance to star in an NBC comedy series starring Spitzer and Ledgin.

Except for Grier.

“I loved the writing, but I didn’t know anyone from the show,” Grier told TheWrap. “I knew Wendi’s work and Allison’s work from ‘Fargo,’ so I knew it was a good cast … but I didn’t. meet the showrunners.” A rave review from “American Auto” star Ana Gasteyer encouraged him to sign on for the project, but the strong comedy in the script was what really sold him.

For McLendon-Covey, “St. Denis” was a chance for her to play a “stingy” character who was completely different from the “sweet” matriarch Beverly Goldberg, who she had played for 10 seasons on ABC’s “The Goldbergs.”

“She’s annoying, but she’s good at what she does, and you need someone like that to keep things running in a pressure-cooker place like a hospital,” she told TheWrap. “He probably thought, ‘I can make a difference from the inside.’ “I’ll take on the insurance companies.” That will make a bitter person, won’t it?

Like many involved in making the show, Tolman shared a personal connection to the premise. Months before the script for “St. Denis” came to her, left Los Angeles and returned to her home state of Texas. Her father fell ill and had to spend six weeks in the hospital, so she took care of the house while her mother stayed by his side during the day. They decompressed at the end of each day by watching half-hour comedies together.

“It felt like kismet. And (Alex) reminded me a lot of my mom,” Tolman said, adding that the chance to shine a light on the lives of “underrepresented and underappreciated” health care workers felt like the perfect way to honor them.

“The show does a really good job of balancing the silly with the sweet, so it doesn’t feel like we’re ever going, ‘this job is hilarious,'” she added. “These are people whose job it is to be with people on their worst days – or on their best days in some cases – and any profession has things that are absolutely absurd… Some episodes we’re in the larger story doing something strange, and others I speak of a deep truth of this world.”

In the writers room

The show starts on the page, of course. The writers behind “St. Denis Medical” had a lot of juggling to create a funny, emotional and at least somewhat accurate comedy series.

The show’s 13-member writing staff prioritized fine-tuning jokes during TheWrap’s exclusive visit to the writers’ room in late July as the cast and crew prepared to film five additional episodes ordered by the network. Although the actual writing of an episode’s outline happens individually, the team came together to go through the drafts for Episodes 14 and 15, reading the scenes on the table and making notes on how to satisfy the game points – including a much-discussed joke that subtly suggests that Matt (Leeper), a strange but lovable new nurse who joins the staff in the series premiere, engages in animal masturbation in his spare time (“Maybe a horse? A whale? A goat?”).

“I love that we’re going to spend the entire hour debating masturbation jokes and fun animal facts,” Spitzer joked. “We’re trying to teach you.”

Spitzer and Ledgin led the discussion in the room, noting that nearly every member of the team has a family member or close relationship with someone in the medical field. The team also consults with medical experts to ensure that the jargon, procedures and cases presented on the show are as accurate as possible. The medical technicians then ensure that the execution of the scenes on the set remains in top form.

The show is definitely a comedy, and each writer brought a new flair to the jokes discussed in the room — even if the reasoning behind the jokes wasn’t always obvious to Spitzer.

“It’s so small, I feel stupid even mentioning it, but when she says ‘let’s go into formation’ it might sound like ‘info,'” he told the room as he gave a note on a cold open line for Joyce: whatever reference is made.

There was an unexpected moment of silence as he tried to come up with an alternative, until another writer pointed out that the line was a clear nod to Beyoncé’s hit song “Formation.” Laughter grew as Spitzer received a crash course on global superstardom. Then they moved on to the next scene.

As for the “true blue” joke about Matt? Spitzer and Ledgin told TheWrap that they ultimately cut it during the editing process — presumably to avoid a memo from NBC’s standards and practices department.

“This is the most time spent on a blue joke all year,” Spitzer said.

“St. Denis Medical” premieres Tuesday, Nov. 12 on NBC, streaming the next day on Peacock.