Seeing how professionals react to television series based on their profession is interesting. You get to learn the differences and the rare accuracies between real individuals and their fictional counterparts.
Over the years, there have been several TV shows that have influenced generations into picking a career path that would otherwise not suit their interests. The glamour and drama seen on the screen are very convincing that the drama in real life would seem boring. Here are some top television series that made difficult professions hot and sensational.
Criminal Defense Attorney
How to Get Away With Murder was a legal drama that ran for six seasons over almost six years. The main character, Annalise Keating, an experienced criminal lawyer, was also teaching in a university. She brings a bunch of freshmen into how criminals’ minds work. Over the seasons, the drama in her personal life and of her students unfolds as a mystery. With a smattering of murders in the storyline, lawyers adept at making alibis for their clients have become key suspects in orchestrating the murders.
In truth, a criminal lawyer may not be as glamorous as Annalise Keating whose clothes are always on point. Some opponents might be dangerous, and cases might drag for a lack of supporting evidence on both sides. What is accurate though is that someone in that profession is bound to face a lot of pressure.
The Field of Medicine
The arrogance of Dr. Stephen Strange, played by Benedict Cumberbatch is the perfect image for many people’s ideas of genius surgeons. But we owe the excitement of the rush in the emergency department and the tense operating rooms to a TV series that ran for 15 seasons – ER. The series was interestingly created by a medical doctor himself, Michael Chrichton. Although he may not be popular in the field of medicine, people know him for his novels which include The Lost World, Congo, and Jurassic Park. Being a man more known for his novels and film, he knew how to make hospital scenes more extravagant and thrilling.
ER was aired from 1994 to 2009. During its run, another TV series that hooked people into hospital scenes were created. House, M.D. ran for eight seasons from 2004 to 2012. But instead of portraying usual hospital crises, it focuses on an individual character, the titular Dr. Gregory House. His genius was what primarily moved the story.
Police Officer
Before the police became the target of protests, it was portrayed as an exciting and honorable job in several movies and TV shows. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation ran from 2000 to 2015. It was such a hit that spin-offs were developed. In 2002, CSI: Miami started to air, and in 2004, CSI: NY. The original then was referred to as CSI: Las Vegas.
Unlike television series that have a continuing story in their episodes, a CSI story revolves in one or at most, two episodes. While some characters might show up again, the viewer doesn’t need to watch a previous episode to understand what’s happening.
FBI Agent
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, with its cloak of secrecy, has piqued the interest of people. After all, the sighting of extraterrestrial beings, abnormalities in the natural world that the government allegedly wants to keep hidden, and international spies are attributed to this bureau. Whether these hold any truth, these ideas were brought into the television screen with the X-Files.
Although the favorite recurring theme of the series had been aliens, the series had a good number of episodes that picked up ideas from other supernatural creatures. One episode, for example, El Mundo Gira, combined the investigation into aliens and the legendary creature from the Americas, the Chupacabra.
The Field of Journalism
The Newsroom might be almost as frenzied and tense as its real counterpart. But its writer, Aaron Sorkin, admitted that he turned the drama up a bit. What many viewers liked about it though was that it was using real events in their news reports. The third season even took to task the media illiteracy of the public and the problems created by misinformation.
For sure, the scenes that have been depicted in these television series have been exaggerated. After all, they wouldn’t be as interesting if they showed the mundane realities. Even the ‘reality shows’ that we know are orchestrated as who would want to watch a normal family having dinner together and doing their separate things afterward? We could not fault the entertainment industry for making things more dramatic. After all, that’s what it is there for — to distract us from the grim realities.
