High quality, highly addictive series appear to be in abundance compared to say ten years ago. Perhaps it is my subjective perception, or perhaps the quality and quantity really has improved, whatever the case, I am very happy to be able to choose between the likes of 24, Lost, Rome, Desperate Housewives, The L Word (no comment on that quality) and now, Grey’s Anatomy. It’s a weird name for a series, but not so weird once I discovered it was taken from the book Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body. Still, I had absolutely no idea what to expect from it or even that it was a medical series when I started watching.It is my most recent addiction.

In the first episode we are introduced to Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), an attractive young woman (with a slight speech impediment which is never mentioned) starting a gruelling seven years as a surgical intern at Seattle Grace Hospital. Her name makes it easy to deduce that she is the main character. However, her fellow interns (all eager surgeons-to-be) and supervisors at the hospital are soon introduced as equally important and endearing characters.

George (T.R. Knight) is a lovable, cuddly Irish boy with a soft spot for Meredith. Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) is the apparently ‘hardened bitch’ intern who will do anything to scrub in on a surgery. Izzie (Katherine Heigl) is the blonde but clever girl who grew up in a trailer park, posing for underwear adverts to pay her way through college. Patrick Dempsey (remember him from Can’t Buy Me Love – 1987?) plays a top brain surgeon and one of my favourite characters is ‘the nazi’ (Miranda Bailey), the resident who governs the interns with an iron fist – or does she?

That’s what works so well in this series – the characters and their personal experiences and struggles interspersed with sometimes touching patient storylines. The balance between comedy and drama is handled very well and each episode has a theme (which works better than it may sound). Apparently some of the surgical details are inaccurate and unrealistic, but I am glad I don’t know enough about it to let that bother me.

There is the occasional episode that I felt was under par, but on the whole I’d say that 85% of this series was brilliant and kept me glued to the screen even shedding a tear here and there.

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