If you haven’t yet tuned into Doc, you’re missing the most-streamed international series on 7Plus.
The medical drama is built on a premise that’s equal parts terrifying and strangely enviable. Imagine wiping the slate clean and forgetting nearly the last decade of your life.
Molly Parker, known for the steely resolve she brought to Deadwood and House of Cards, stars as Dr Amy Larsen. She plays a brilliant physician who loses eight years of her memory after a brain injury in a car accident.
Suddenly, she’s a stranger in her own life. She’s forgotten her divorce, her patients, and tragically, the death of her son.
As the show heads into a massive 22-episode second season – most series only average between eight to 10 – Parker spoke to Mediaweek about why her character might not actually want those memories back, and the sheer endurance required to produce that much network TV.
Molly Parker with Ian McShane in Deadwood
A detective in her own life
For most medical procedures, the central tension is whether the patient survives. In Doc, the tension is whether the doctor can survive her own history. Parker suggests that while the amnesia is a medical catastrophe, it also offers a strange form of relief.
“Part of the grace of the accident for Amy has been that she is sort of freed from the trauma that she was carrying from when her son died,” Parker explained. “That allows her to be a compassionate person, a characteristic that she just couldn’t access before.”
However, the bliss of ignorance is short-lived in Season 2. Parker reveals that Amy begins experiencing “flashes of memories, sometimes just images with no context”. This sparks a new internal battle.
“She feels she really needs to understand what she’s lived through so that she can be present,” Parker said. “She realises that the door is open. Those memories are there. She just has to figure out how to access them.”
Parker notes that this turns the medical drama on its head. “Sometimes I feel like she’s a detective,” she said. “She’s a detective in her own life.”
Molly Parker and Amirah Vann, who plays Dr Gina Walker
The heart of the matter
Despite the internal turmoil, Parker believes the show’s defining trait is its emotional core.
“I think it has heart,” Parker said. “There’s a lot of kindness in the show, and I think we need that now more than ever.”
It is a sentiment that stands in stark contrast to the real-world headlines emerging from Minneapolis, the city where the show is set. While the location serves as a backdrop for the drama, the production itself takes place in the safety of a Toronto studio.
“I’ve never gone to work, day after day in the same place,” Parker laughs regarding the stability of the shoot. “It’s the same set. It’s the hospital. It’s the sixth floor of West Side Hospital.”
Filming the second season of Doc will take around 10 months
The 22-episode grind
That stability is necessary given the workload.
In a production landscape often defined by short, limited series, Doc is proving the enduring value of the 22-episode order.
“It’ll take us 10 months to do the whole thing. So, it’s a tremendous amount of work,” Parker admitted. “It’s the hardest work I’ve done, probably in my life, just because of the scale of it.”
For Parker, the volume of episodes allows for a specific kind of storytelling that streaming often misses. “We get to have the part where you have your regular characters, and you follow their story over a long period of time,” she observed.
Felicity Huffman joins the cast as Dr Ridley, the formidable new chief of internal medicine
What’s next?
As for what fans can expect from the new series, Parker teases a major addition to the cast who will complicate Amy’s journey further.
“Felicity Huffman joins our cast as a regular character starting in Season 2,” she says. “She plays this great, fascinating mentor of Amy’s who comes out of the woodwork.”
It is a fitting twist for the show’s central premise. As Amy fights to unlock the door to her memories, Huffman’s arrival is a reminder of the show’s limitless potential.
“The great thing about amnesia as a storyline is that anything can happen,” Parker says.
Season 2 premieres January 27 on Seven and 7plus.