I don't want no Scrubs...

Actually I do. I've been a fan of US sitcom Scrubs since I accidentally caught an episode from the first series on cable TV years back, probably not that long after it had started. I remember seeing a trailer for it but not being a medical TV fan (think Casualty and Holby City, two of the most dirge-like and tedious programmes on TV today) I didn't bother to watch it, so I must have caught it on one of these catch up sessions of which channels are now so fond (they have to put less thought and cash in to get more or less the same viewing figures and ad revenue for a given time period - result!). It made me laugh until I was almost in tears and my sides hurt.

Since then I've been a devoted fan but recently I read something somewhere which suggested that series 6 was the last ever series which would have made the double bill aired in the States this week the last ever bit of Scrubs. Thankfully, this has proved unfounded as NBC have confirmed a seventh season will appear this autumn (along with a new season of Heroes with around 30 episodes. For those not in the know, Heroes is a cult series with a following almost as large and devoted as that of Lost, but the programme writers knew how to write something you could actually follow whereas the writers of Lost appear to have been smoking crack when they came up with most of the utterly incomprehensible storylines that they run with).

Oddly, Scrubs was almost a victim of its own success. It started in 2001 with a cast of virtual unknowns (at least on this side of the pond, perhaps an American reader might enlighten me as to any major achievements by any of the cast prior to the show?) with the sole exception, for me, of Sarah Chalke. Ms Chalke was better known to me as Becky from Roseanne (which was shown late on Friday nights on Channel 4 for years in the UK and which I liked for some reason. Probably because John Goodman was so damn funny. It certainly wasn't for Roseanne herself, who is a bit of a fruitloop). However as Scrubs became more popular, the ratings grew and therefore ad revenue grew because it was promoted to prime time slots and therefore the cast got paid more. It seems it's now so successful that the network can barely afford to pay the actors and writers. Still, I think it would be good to finish this programme with one final season which does whatever it needs to do because it is still funny but that can't last. Just look at Friends. It's even had it's own imitators such as Channel 4's desperately shit Green Wing. Still, they do say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

It’s easy for Europeans to adopt a rather superior attitude to the Americans for all sorts of reasons, not least because so much American TV is utter shite. But, now and again, someone somewhere gets it right. Not only that but TV execs realise it and put on the programme. Lost is apparently an example of this although I’ve never seen the appeal, but Scrubs, Heroes, The Sopranos, Family Guy, Futurama, and The Simpsons are all evidence that America is capable of producing well written, well acted mainstream TV shows with wide appeal. There are even more examples of cult TV in other genres: Samurai Jack, Clone Wars and Dexter’s Laboratory are all cult cartoons from the creative genius that is Gennady Tartakovsky but there are plenty of other examples too.

So, I say vive American TV because now and then it throws out some real gems but in between times we can watch Jerry Springer, Judge Judy and Oprah and be thankful that our general populace isn’t quite as utterly retarded as some of the less savoury elements of our transatlantic cousins' society. Although anyone who has watched Tricia or Jeremy Kyle will know that we're trying really hard to emulate the most pikey elements of the public seen on Jerry Springer. Quite why, I have no idea.