Based on Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s acclaimed novel, the TNT drama series Monday Mornings, from award-winning producer David E. Kelley, follows the lives of doctors at Chelsea General Hospital in Portland, Oregon, as they push the limits of their abilities and confront their personal and professional failings.  The title refers to the hospital’s weekly morbidity and mortality conference, when doctors gather with their peers for a confidential review of complications and errors in patient care.  The show stars Ving Rhames, Alfred Molina, Jamie Bamber, Jennifer Finnigan, Bill Irwin, Keong Sim, Sarayu Rao and Emily Swallow.

During this exclusive interview with Collider, actor Jamie Bamber talked about how he came to be a part of the show, how working with David E. Kelley is in a whole other league, whether the medical jargon gets any easier to say, what it’s like to shoot the big meeting scenes, and which character relationships he finds the most fun to play.  He also talked about what led him to acting, and how satisfied he was personally with how Battlestar Galactica ended.  Check out what he had to say after the jump.

David E. Kelley has adapted CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta‘s novel Monday Mornings for TNT, with worthy results.  Kelley is best known as bringing to screen more procedurals than Dick Wolff, from Chicago Hope to Ally McBeal, and Monday Mornings definitely falls in step with the medical drama formula.  Still, there’s something undeniably likable about the series.  But it takes a few episodes to really get started, and if viewers just base on its by-the-books pilot, it may not last beyond its initial ten-episode run (which it should).  Hit the jump for more about why it’s worth tuning in, not at least for the return of Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica) to our screens, and the unexpected and welcomed presence of Ving Rhames (Mission Impossible). 

Based on Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s acclaimed novel, the TNT drama series Monday Mornings, from award-winning producer David E. Kelley, follows the lives of doctors at Chelsea General Hospital in Portland, Oregon, as they push the limits of their abilities and confront their personal and professional failings.  The title refers to the hospital’s weekly morbidity and mortality conference, when doctors gather with their peers for a confidential review of complications and errors in patient care.  The show stars Ving Rhames, Alfred Molina, Jamie Bamber, Jennifer Finnigan, Bill Irwin, Keong Sim, Sarayu Rao and Emily Swallow.

During the TNT portion of the TCA Press Tour, executive producers David E. Kelley and Dr. Sanjay Gupta talked about how this show came about, what makes this medical series different, how everything on the show will be a potential clue for the weekly meetings, how they will collaborate as a team, that there will be longer arcs along with more episodic stories, having to shoot the episodes in seven days, and how close these meetings are to the ones that really go on in hospitals.  Hit the jump for the interview.

Following his ill-fated Wonder Woman reboot, David E. Kelley is headed to cable. The television veteran is teaming up with CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on a medical drama series called Chelsea General. Deadline reports that TNT has greenlit a pilot for the show, which is based on Gupta’s upcoming novel Monday Mornings. The book follows the lives of five surgeons “as they push the limits of their abilities and confront their personal and professional failings.” The namesake comes from the hospital’s weekly Morbidity and Mortality conference on Mondays. M&M’s, as they’re called, serve as a place for physicians to review cases with poor outcomes (ie. death) in order to assess complications and errors that occurred during the patient care.

Kelley has long been a standard in network television, but he decided not to renew his overall deal with Warner Bros. TV in May in order to pursue passion projects in different areas (like cable). He’s no stranger to the medical genre, as he previously created the CBS drama Chicago Hope that ran from 1994-2000. While I was a huge fan of Kelley’s The Practice, it’ll be interesting to see how his take on medicine has changed since Chicago Hope. Gupta’s Monday Mornings will hit bookshelves in March.