'Miami Medical' isn't exactly a thrill ride

If there's a Holy Grail of series television these days, it's the search for a show that's the successor to "ER."

Creating a show that's as good and as wildly popular as "ER" was when it debuted back in 1994 is about as likely as finding the actual Holy Grail. In television's current competitive landscape, it is — if not impossible — then certainly highly unlikely.

Not that that has kept networks from trying. This season alone, NBC is trying both "Trauma" and "Mercy." Without much success.

CBS tried last fall with "Three Rivers," a show that was hugely disappointing both in terms of content and ratings. (It got the ax after eight episodes.)

And CBS is trying again beginning Friday at 9 p.m. on Ch. 2 with a show that's really, really trying to be the next "ER."

"Miami Medical" wants to be "ER" for the 21st century. It wants to take the high adrenaline atmosphere of the emergency room and dial it up several notches.

But "Miami Medical" has a been-there, done-that feel to it. It's so 1995.

And not in a good way.

There are two elements that are designed to make "Miami Medical" stand out from the crowd. First, setting it in Miami.

That doesn't work, because almost the entire pilot episode takes place inside the hospital, so it might have been anywhere. (And the show is filmed in Los Angeles.)

Second, these doctors don't work in the emergency room, they work in the super-duper emergency room where everything is a matter of life and death.

"You don't come to a trauma hospital for a cut or a bruise or even something that seems like a relatively serious injury if you're not losing your life," said executive producer Steve Maeda.

The characters do a lot of talking about the "golden hour" — the first hour after a trauma occurs, when it's most likely the patient can be saved.

"If you did a little bell curve in terms of being able to save a life, in those first 60 minutes, if you can get to these doctors ... the odds of saving your life are way up here on the bell curve," said creator/executive producer Jeffrey Lieber. "And then the minute you hit that 60-minute mark, it starts to drop precipitously. So it's really about how do people who are faced with that line between life and death in every day — both how do they do what they do for a living, and then how do you go home and just live a life?"