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Monday Mornings is the new medical drama premiering tonight on TNT from Executive Producers David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, Chicago Hope) and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, whose book the show is based upon. Unlike other medical dramas, this show revolves around morbidity and mortality meetings where doctors confront what went wrong to cause patient to die.

Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galatica) and Jennifer Finnigan (Better with You) both play neurosurgeons at the show’s Chelsea General Hospital in Portland, Oregon. They spoke with reporters recently on a conference call about the realism of the Monday Mornings world.

One big difference they mentioned versus other medical shows past and present is the emphasis on the medicine and presenting it in a realistic manner. While there will be some romance, the primary focus is not on the doctors’ personal lives, but instead on the medical happenings.

Here are 5 areas that Monday Mornings has focused on to provide a realistic look at the medical profession from Bamber and Finnigan:

Operating rooms almost surgery ready 

Bamber: … everything in those rooms is real. Sanjay [Gupta] has told me and others that were anybody to have an aneurysm on the set he could do everything in that room to get in there and solve the problem. They’re not sterile that’s the only difference.

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Monday Mornings airs on Mondays (crazy, right?) on TNT.

If sexy doctors are your thing, TNT has a treat for you. Jamie Bamber’s puppy-dog eyes and masculine-yet-never-threatening good looks are sure to cause dangerous levels of swooning. But beyond Bamber’s smoldering yet boyish visage, I’m not really sure what the point of this pilot is.

Monday Mornings is about the the daily challenges faced by surgeons in a fictional Portland hospital – including an oddly avant-garde, public shaming ritual in a setting which looks an awful lot like a black box theater (possibly to make Alfred Molina feel more at home). Unfortunately, the trials and tribulations of generic surgeons in a generic hospital constitute some of the most exhausted clichés of all time. There is literally nothing new here – no spin, no twist.

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TNT’s newest drama “Monday Mornings” will debut on February 4 at 10:00 PM. It comes from executive producers, David E. Kelley and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Jamie Bamber plays Dr. Tyler Wilson and Jennifer Finnigan plays Dr. Tina Ridgeway and they recently talked about the show, their characters and what viewers can expect to see this season.

Q: What was it about the script that attracted you to this show?

Jamie Bamber: It was really three things for me. When you read David E. Kelley’s name on a script you get a good feeling, you know that this is going to get a chance, people are going to give it a chance and then Sanjay Gupta coupled with that so you have David Kelley’s dramatic experience and then you’ve got Sanjay Gupta the medical angle and a great communicator in his own right that everyone’s heard of and you’ve got two great authorities right there.

But for me it was about the character in that first episode because when you read one episode you don’t know really what the series is going to look like but I knew that there was a really good character that I could get myself and my teeth into someone who has been blessed with natural confidence and his own ability whose confidence is shattered in the very first episode. So I knew there was massive dramatic potential and I trusted that David and Sanjay would know how to make more of the same and it was really those three ingredients.

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In the series premiere of TNT’s new medical drama “Monday Mornings,” Dr. Tyler Wilson’s boss calls the talented neurosurgeon arrogant, careless and reckless.

Those words sting enough, but the boss delivers the verbal beating in front of Wilson’s peers at a weekly M&M, or morbidity and mortality, conference in which doctors’ decisions are scrutinized in the wake of patient deaths.

“We do get to see a human side of these guys, which isn’t just who’s having an affair with whom or the office politics,” says Jamie Bamber, who plays Wilson, suggesting that by showing the “brutal” sessions in which doctors are picked apart, “Monday Mornings,” which debuts at 9 p.m. CT Feb. 4, is a “departure from the way doctors are presented on TV.

“It’s genuinely about their ability to open up someone’s head and tinker around inside and get the right results, which is a massive responsibility which no human being can take on without any kind of sense of their own fallibility.”

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