2013’s Do No Harm was a blink-and-you-miss-it series that showed some promise but was quickly killed off by its network.
What Is It?
This modern take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde follows Dr. Jason Cole as he balances working as a neurosurgeon while battling with his evil alter ego, Ian Price.
Aired: NBC, 2013, 1 Season Totaling 13 Episodes
Created By: David Schulner
Starring: Steven Pasquale, Alana de la Garza, Ruta Gedmintas, Phylicia Rashad, Michael Esper
Why Was It Cancelled?
This NBC mid-season entry came and went so quickly that the few people who tuned in and got attached to it must have been left saying “What happened?!” And what happened is that the network just flat did not give this one a chance. The show debuted on Thursday, January31st in the 10 PM EST hour and pulled the lowest in-season premiere ever for a scripted series on the Big Four broadcast networks up to that point. And then it dropped even further in its second week, with numbers barely acceptable to the fifth place network The CW. The network yanked the show from the schedule at that point, but the fact is that they stacked the odds against it going in.
Do No Harm was scheduled in the Thursday 10 PM EST hour which the network had struggled with for years (the prior season’s genre entry Awake died a slow death in that slot at mid-season). And NBC’s Thursday comedy block had been waning in the ratings, offering Do No Harm only a tepid lead-in that didn’t really share much in the way of audience appeal. The network execs should have tempered expectations with the series, but instead, they made the snap decision to boot it from the schedule. They could have potentially rescheduled the show and paired it up with Grimm which had been performing quite well on Friday nights. That could have given it a better lead-in from a genre audience that might have stuck around for the Jekyll and Hyde series. But the network kicked it to a Summer burn-off run after which it was cast to the television wasteland heap.
Do No Harm may not have counted as a great series, but it had promise and could have turned into a sleeper genre entry if given the chance. However, that was at a point when the broadcast networks were still paying close attention to the overnight Nielsen ratings and killing off shows pretty quickly if they did not measure up to expectations. And considering the fact that NBC did not give this show much of a chance in the first place, its fate seemed to be predetermined before it aired.
Should It Be Rebooted?
Do No Harm aired recently enough that it actually could be revived and carry on with its story. Perhaps Dr. Cole managed to suppress his alter ego for the past ten-plus years, but something has happened recently to cause him to struggle with it again. Steven Pasquale does not appear to be committed to any ongoing series at the moment, so perhaps they could coax him to return to the role. And this show could be done on a reasonable budget which would make it attractive in the cost-cutting environment of the post-Peak TV era.
But the fact that this show never developed much of a following (because its network did not give it a chance) suggests that neither a revival nor a reboot would happen unless perhaps creator David Schulner got behind it and tried to shop it around to some of the streaming services. (Maybe they could emphasize the horror elements and this one could move to Shudder?) Apart from that, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story is still a strong one, and I expect to see that revisited at some point. But the chances for a Do No Harm reboot/revival seem very slim at this point.
Where Can You Watch It?
This show never received a DVD release and it is not currently available for streaming on any of the major services, but you can search out episodes on YouTube from time to time.
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