Doctor Odyssey is utterly and completely mad and by far the most fun show of 2024. If you want an example of how mad it is there's a moment in Plastic Surgery Week — yes each episode has a theme! — when a woman is lazing in the pool when her nose completely falls off! Can this even happen? Well, it can in the world of Doctor Odyssey!
So the setup is we're on a posh cruise ship and it has a new doctor Max Bankman (Joshua Jackson) who joins nurses Avery Morgan (Phillipa Soo) and Tristan Silva (Sean Teale) to form a threesome (more on threesomes later!).
They’re led by Captain Massey (Miami Vice's Don Johnson). One of the many joys of this series is that Captain Massey takes his job ridiculously seriously. He seems to be under the impression that rather than captaining a ship full of rich, crazy cruisers he is, in fact marshalling a battleship in World War Two under attack from German submarines. This leads him each week to come out with farcically serious lines — "This ship is heaven. Our mission is to preserve the dream" — to which Max and co nod at his wise counsel.
The three medics are the best medics on the planet. They can cure anything and I mean anything! They know how to treat a man who's eaten so much shrimp he's got iodine poisoning, a passenger who got copper poisoning by eating raw meat, and a couple who have somehow managed to get locked together while being, erm, intimate!
The chemistry between the three leads is great, with Max and Tristan constantly falling in and out of love with Avery. There's meant to be a deep moment where after a tragedy onboard they start discussing their bucket lists and they discuss normal bucket-like things until one of them says they'd like a threesome! Max then gives a trademark smug look and declares he's already ticked that one off. But then Avery says she's up for one and suddenly this is where the next mad plot twist goes. Surely this isn't normal behavior for a ship's medical team?! What would HR say?
We haven't even got to the mad guest stars. In Plastic Surgery Week ("In case of an emergency, you can use your implants as a flotation device"), human Ken Doll (Justin Jedlica) turns up and Max is revealed to be his number one fan as he became hooked on him while fighting for his life with Covid in hospital. Yep, they're flashbacks to Max watching Ken from his sickbed. In Singles Week, Shania Twain swans on as a glam grandmother who immediately makes a beeline for Captain Massey. We almost forgot in that episode it's revealed that poor Captain Massey is suffering from broken heart syndrome!
Doctor Odyssey has a little in common with Rivals but to be honest it's on a whole new level of craziness than even that show. If you want a series to put a smile on your face and to just enjoy without thinking too much this is perfect.
Doctor Odyssey is on Hulu in the US and Disney Plus in the UK.
