45th Anniversary of The Interns

The Interns isn’t one of my favorite obscurities, so I’m not all that eager to see more episodes the way I am with many shows. I’ve seen two, I think, and that gave me a pretty good feel for the medical drama that celebrates its 45th anniversary today. It premiered on Friday, September 18th, 1970. My article about the show can be found here.

Broderick Crawford starred as the somewhat ill-tempered doctor charged with supervising five young interns played by Stephen Brooks, Christopher Stone, Hal Frederick, Mike Farrell and Sandra Smith. Episodes featured plots involving medical mysteries and personal problems faced by the interns.

Like so many of the new shows that debuted in the fall of 1970, The Interns was part of the wave of relevance and reality that the networks assumed viewers wanted. The interns were young and diverse–one was African-American while another was a woman in a male-dominated field. Another was married, which added further potential for tension to the series.

CBS ignored critics who blasted the series and despite middling ratings decided to pick it up for the entire 1970-1971 season. A total of 24 episodes were broadcast.

At some point during the 1990s, cable channel Nostalgia Channel (later known as American Life TV and GoodLife TV) aired episodes of The Interns. Whether you watched it on CBS in 1970 and 1971 or during the 1990s on cable, if you have any memories of The Interns, please share them in comments.


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4 Replies to “45th Anniversary of The Interns”

  1. If you consider “All In The Family” (which premiered in January, 1971) to be “relevant”, then that was the only “relevant” show premiering in the 1970-71 TV season to have become successful.

  2. I do remember the Interns. Although I was 9 years old at the time, I enjoyed.the stories and particularly Christopher Stone’s character, Dr. Pooch Hardin. The opening credits showed Stone on a motorcycle, stopping to pick up Stephen Brooks on his way to the hospital. Both actors are gone now. Mike Farrell, later of MASH, played Dr. Marsh. The show also featured Elaine Giftos, Sandra Smith, and gravel-voiced Broderick Crawford as chief of medicine and the interns’ supervisor. After 45 years, I vividly recall two episodes: the first, where Bridget Hanley of “Here Come the Brides” played a clown who injured herself at the hospital, and the second, where Stone’s character Dr. Hardin suffers flashbacks after attending a party where LSD-spiked punch is served.

    Happy 45th Anniversary to the Interns, and thank you, Television Obscurities, for keeping their memory alive!

    1. Is The Interns available on dvd? I remember the episode Mondays can be Fatal where Pooch was drugged at a party the weekend before. I think the drug wss called DOM an absolute dream. Also remember an episode where I think a reporter asked a patient how it felt to be dying. He answered that it tickled. And an episode where a clown was revived with paddkes9. I was 13 at the time. When Mike Farrell came to MASH I knew exactly who he was. Good show and good acting.

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