HBO Max unveils Paris medical drama Rush after The Pitt Emmy wins
HBO Max has unveiled Rush, a medical drama set in Paris, at the La Rochelle Fiction Festival.
Rush is a working title, meaning a temporary name used while a series is developed. The series follows a close-knit group of mobile medical teams carrying emergency medicine across the city. Patients do not come to them. They go to the patients.
It is created and written by Nils-Antoine Sambuc. Gaëlle Bellan, Maya Haffar and Maxime Crupeaux join as co-writers. Neal Baer is attached as executive producer, the senior role that guides a series creatively and financially.
HBO Max content boss Sarah Aubrey said her team wanted to replicate the success of Emmy-winner The Pitt around the world, according to Deadline. She had said in March that the streamer was developing medical dramas in France and Italy. Rush is the French part of that plan to go public.
The model is easy to understand. The Pitt won Outstanding Drama at the Emmys, and lead actor Noah Wyle also won. The US series is now preparing a third season. Aubrey's team is now testing whether that hospital formula can be rebuilt in another language and another health system.
HBO Max also detailed a second French original in La Rochelle. Bodycam, also a working title, is described as a thriller-horror. It centres on two beat cops who shoot an unarmed teenager and then cover it up. That is a darker, street-level story sitting alongside the medical slate.
Bodycam comes from Timothée Hochet and Benjamin Adam with the collaboration of Mehdi Ouahab. Hélène Faure and Maxime Berthémy are credited as co-writers. Both Rush and Bodycam sit within the French scripted slate overseen by Clémentine Bobin, Director of Original Scripted Production for HBO Max France, as reported by Deadline.
What makes this stand out is movement. A hospital drama is usually organised around one building and one waiting room. Rush is organised around teams on the road. For viewers, that means emergency medicine told through journeys across Paris, not just beds in a ward.
