Dr. Sanjay Gupta gets green light for TNT pilot

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He’s a veteran neurosurgeon, the chief medical correspondent for CNN, a soon-to-be-published novelist and was once under consideration to be named Surgeon General of the United States (although that didn’t come to be). Now Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to be executive producer of a potential TV series. Yes, it’s a medical series.


TNT has given the green light to produce a pilot for “Chelsea General,” a medical drama based on Gupta’s upcoming novel, “Monday Mornings.”

He’ll be teamed with a real heavy-hitter on the TV production side, David E. Kelley, who wrote the script for the pilot.

“Chelsea General promises to be a smart, witty and extremely powerful medical drama, the kind of series David E. Kelley is renowned for making,” said Michael Wright, executive vice president, head of programming for TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies (TCM). “We look forward to working with David and Sanjay in bringing the doctors’ fascinating stories and characters to television.”

Set to be published in March 2012 by Grand Central Publishing, Gupta’s Monday Mornings follows the lives of five surgeons as they push the limits of their abilities and confront their personal and professional failings. The book uses as its backdrop their 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 book provides a unique look at how surgeons come to terms with mistakes and try to learn from them.