The Mob Doctor

Jordana Spiro returns to TV this Fall, but now the My Boys star is making the move from cable to network television. She's also a long way away from comedy, as Fox's new drama The Mob Doctor blends the genres of mafia and medical shows. Read on to find out if you should get your DVR programmed or not for tonight's premiere.

• What it's about: Grace (Spiro) is a gifted surgeon who loves her family almost as much as her job. Her loyalty comes with a price, though: to help pay off her brother's debts, Grace must act as the unofficial doctor for the gangsters that are prepared to hang him out to dry otherwise. She's able to stay strong and keep her commitments separate, but when the two worlds collide, she's faced with some serious moral dilemmas.
• Where it works: I was skeptical of how the mob world and medical world would be knitted together, but the pilot actually strikes a nice balance between the two. The drama is definitely heavier on the family/mafia side, though — it's hard to care too much about Grace's patients. That said, her relationship with a fellow doc (Zach Gilford) is a nice touch, if not a little too predictable.
• Where it doesn't: Seeing Grace treat criminals in secret random warehouses is a bit hokey, especially as she's quickly paged back to the hospital to return to her regular career; it almost feels like she's a morally ambiguous superhero. It also makes it hard to wrap your head around how long she can really go on living a double life before she loses her medical license.
• When it's on: Mondays at 9 p.m. on Fox
• You might like this show if: You're interested in a medical show with a fresh angle.

To watch a preview of The Mob Doctor plus a preview, just read more

My Boys star Jordana Spiro makes the leap from cable comedy to prime-time drama with the new Fox series The Mob Doctor, and the actress came to TCA today to talk about the show with her costars and showrunners. Spiro plays Grace Devlin, a doctor forced into doing the dirty work for the Chicago mob in exchange for keeping her family safe, a premise that executive producer Rob Wright describes as being like "E.R. meets The Sopranos." Those are two iconic series to live up to, but here's what the panelists had to say to back up that idea.

• Cocreator Wright supported his comparison to E.R. and The Sopranos by saying that the intersection of the doctors and the mob members gives them "both high brow and regular people," while his fellow creator Josh Berman said that the character of Grace will have her morality compromised. In case you're worried that it will take Grace a whiIe before she gets her hands dirty, Berman assured us that "something will make Grace step over the line" within the first few episodes.
• Even though Spiro is known for her comedy My Boys, it sounds like she's happy to be doing drama. She described her younger self as "kind of emo" who fancied herself a dramatic actress, "but fell into comedy."
• Lots of deaths come with the territory of a mob show, but the other characters who play doctors and nurses aren't safe just because they're not directly tied to the mob. Zach Gilford, who plays a fellow doctor and love interest for Grace, explained, "We're all expendable in a mob world," while Floriana Lima, who plays a nurse, said she wanted to be put in danger: "I'd like to be involved with the mob stuff."
• So, are there mob doctors in the real world? Wright and Berman did research about their very existence when they had the idea for this show and found a book called Il Dottore, about a real-life doctor who worked with the Mafia. The studio bought the rights to the book, which then provided some more inspiration for the series.

To see more pictures from the panel, just read more.

The upfronts are next week, and we'll find out more about the new shows coming to the Fall 2012 TV lineup, but we've got the early scoop on the series the networks have already picked up. We went over the new NBC shows, and now you can get acquainted with the new projects coming to Fox below.

COMEDIES

• The Mindy Project: The Office's Mindy Kaling is executive producing and starring in this comedy as an OB/GYN figuring out her career and personal life.
• The Goodwin Games: Becki Newton, Scott Foley, and Jake Lacey play estranged siblings who are brought together when their father dies and have to follow the conditions in his will in order to claim their inheritance.
• Ben & Kate: Comedian Nat Faxon stars as a free spirit who moves in with his uptight sister (Dakota Johnson), who's a single mother, and helps raise her baby.

DRAMAS

• The Following: Kevin Bacon stars as an FBI profiler who comes out of retirement to track down the followers of a serial killer in this thriller from The Vampire Diaries creator Kevin Williamson.
• The Mob Doctor: My Boys' Jordana Spiro plays a doctor who is forced to attend to the mob in this drama, which also costars Friday Night Lights' Zach Gilford.