Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dr. Death’ On Peacock, Where Joshua Jackson Is A Sadistic Neurosurgeon, With Alec Baldwin And Christian Slater Trying To Stop Him

Dr. Death is based on the podcast of the same name, produced by Wondery. It involves the case of Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a spinal neurosurgeon who left a trail of dead and permanently disabled patients in his wake at two different Dallas-area medical centers in 2012. In the story, two of his fellow surgeons, along with a dogged prosecutor, finally stop him, exposing a medical hiring system that is deeply flawed.

DR. DEATH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We hear a group of people testifying about how Dr. Christopher Duntsch (Joshua Jackson) ruined their lives or the lives of loved ones. We see a closeup of Duntsch, and as we pull back, we see he’s not in doctor’s scrubs but scrubs that say “Inmate” on them.

The Gist: We go back to July, 2012. Madeline Bayer (Maryann Plunkett) is in the Dallas Medical Center filling out forms in preparation for a back operation Dr. Duntsch will perform. He’s a well-known neurosurgeon whose practice has been thriving of late, but he recently moved to Dallas Medical from Baylor Plano, for reasons unknown.

A few days later, Bayer is back on the table, this time Dr. Robert Henderson (Alec Baldwin) is doing corrective surgery to fix what Duntsch messed up; when Henderson looks at the damage Duntsch has done, he’s shocked. After the surgery, Bayer still can’t move her left foot, and she tells Henderson that she never wants Duntsch to come near her again.

Henderson goes to Josh Baker (Hubert Point-Du Jour), the circulating nurse during Bayer’s operation; Baker is feeling guilty for not stopping Duntsch as he got in deeper with the mistakes he was making, but Henderson assures him it wasn’t his job. At the same time, the hospital administrator goes to vascular surgeon, Dr. Randall Kirby (Christian Slater), to find out if he had any experience with Duntsch. The first words out of Kirby’s mouth, while he’s working on a patient, “Doctor is a strong word.”

Kirby goes to Henderson’s office to see if Duntsch can be barred from other surgeries. Of the three he did that week, one is in a coma after he nicked a critical artery and we know about Bayer.

As they compare notes, we flash back to the previous Monday, to see the Kellers enter Duntsch’s practice to get a consult before the wife’s surgery. This is where we see Duntsch’s narcissism in action; he believes he’s the best at what he does, and that he left Baylor because he was being held back. But we also see his dark side. He treats nurses like Baker like lower-level humans, he has a hole in his scrub pants that Baker can’t stop looking at, and when the administrator comes to him after Mrs. Keller’s surgery takes too long, he immediately wants to know who ratted him out. Also, he never takes the blame for mistakes.

After one rough surgery, he calls his dad Don (Fredric Lehne), who drives up from Colorado out of concern. Don is a religious sort, and when he tells Christopher that his pride is a sin, Christopher gets pissed and leaves. We see him across the street from someone’s house, and he keeps wanting to call his former business partner, Dr. Kim Morgan (Grace Gummer).

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Because of its podcast origins, Dr. Death has the feel of another podcast-based series, Dirty John. It even has the same tonal shifts from serious to glib.

Our Take: Despite the subject matter, and despite the stellar cast, something about Dr. Death felt off. The series, adapted from the hit podcast by Wondery by Patrick Macmanus, doesn’t seem to know where to take the real story of Dr. Duntsch, who was sent to prison for life for permanently maiming a patient.

The real-life story of Duntsch involves his prodigious drinking and drug habit, performing surgeries while severely impaired, his arrogance despite his lack of experience, and a medical system that’s broken, especially when it comes to hiring. We suspect all of those issues will be dealt with during the series’ 8 episodes, but the first episode is more content with giving hints and clues than it is about actually telling the story.

It might be because the main cast members feel like they’re playing caricatures of roles they’ve already played. We’ve see Jackson play the arrogant psychopath before, and as Duntsch, he’s playing an amped-up version of that, a guy who’s convinced himself that curing glioblastoma, for instance, isn’t as complicated as other doctors are making it out to be. He is assuredly a sociopath and narcissist with a massive drinking and drug problem. But Jackson at times turns Duntsch’s arrogance into villainy, as if he needed a handlebar mustache to twirl between his fingers while he cackles.

Slater, who plays the outspoken Dr. Kirby, is all quips and stories about getting caught speeding in his Jag on the way to an operation, more of a classic snide Slater character than what he played on, say, Mr. Robot. In the case of Baldwin, it’s like he’s playing the thoracic surgeon in Malice, but just mellowed into fatherly arrogance after 30 years. (AnnaSophia Robb, who plays prosecutor Michelle Shughart, doesn’t appear in the first episode.)

However, what Dr. Death gets right on the nose is the uneasy feeling that anyone has when they put their health and life in the hands of a doctor they know little to nothing about. In a speech Duntsch makes to a patient’s husband, he rattles off credentials (an MD and PhD.) and says that he shouldn’t worry about her.

But many of us have fallen victim to surgeons overpromising, whether we were the patient or a loved one of that patient. As much as we like to think that this doctor will do right by us or our loved one, they’re just humans with frailties like we all are. Mistakes can be made, sometimes catastrophic ones. Back surgeries are a crapshoot to begin with, and watching Duntsch butcher his patients doesn’t make us confident about that option if we are faced with it. Let’s hope that uneasiness continues as Kirby and Henderson, with the help of Shughart, try to stop Duntsch from maiming anyone else.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: As Henderson and Kirby find out from an administrator from a hospital in Milwaukee that the Duntsch he employed and had no problem with was the same guy who is in Dallas, Duntsch gets ready to start another spinal fusion surgery.

Sleeper Star: The administrator Henderson and Kirby call to confirm Duntsch’s conduct at other hospitals has a very familiar voice. Want a hint? On his most famous show, most people called him.

Most Pilot-y Line: We’re trying to get the significance of Baker obsessing over the hole in Duntsch’s scrubs. Yes, we see that Duntsch doesn’t exactly treat his scrubs with care, but what does the hole tell Baker that we’re not thinking about?

Our Call: STREAM IT. We have a lot of reservations about Dr. Death, but considering the show will examine just how a butcher like Duntsch can keep getting hired by major hospitals who should be vetting their hires better, we’ll keep watching. The cast helps things along, despite their sometimes over-the-top performances.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Dr. Death On Peacock