St. Elsewhere

St. Elsewhere is an American medical drama television series that originally ran on NBC from October 26, 1982 to May 25, 1988. The series is set at fictional St. Eligius, a decaying urban teaching hospital in Boston's South End neighborhood. The show starred Ed Flanders, Norman Lloyd and William Daniels all as teaching doctors, who gave interns a promising future in making critical decisions.

The hospital's nickname, "St. Elsewhere", is a slang term used in the medical industry to refer to lesser-equipped hospitals that serve patients not wanted by more prestigious institutions, and (to the further detriment of St. Eligius' reputation) also used in medical academia to refer to non-teaching hospitals in general. In the pilot episode, Dr. Mark Craig informs his colleagues that the local Boston media have bestowed the derogatory nickname upon St. Eligius since they perceive the hospital as "a dumping ground, a place you wouldn't want to send your mother-in-law." In fact, the hospital is so poorly thought of that its shrine to St. Eligius is commonly defiled by hospital staff and visitors, and is referred to by Dr. Wayne Fiscus as "the patron saint of longshoremen and bowlers." As a medical drama, St. Elsewhere dealt with serious issues of life and death, though episodes also included a substantial amount of black comedy.

Although the series never ranked higher than 49th place in the yearly Nielsen ratings, it maintained a large enough audience to last six seasons and 137 episodes, and the show's famously provocative series finale is frequently mentioned in discussions about television series finales. It was produced by MTM Enterprises, which found success with Hill Street Blues around the same time. The shows were often compared to each other for their ensemble casts and serial storylines. The original ad for the series quoted a critic that called the series "Hill Street Blues in a Hospital."

The series was filmed at CBS/MTM Studios, which was known as CBS/Fox Studios when the show began. Coincidentally, 20th Century Fox wound up acquiring the rights to the series years later.

In 1993, TV Guide named St. Elsewhere the best drama series of the 1980's. In 1997, the acclaimed two-part episode "Time Heals" was ranked #44 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. In 2002, St. Elsewhere was ranked #20 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.