Real-time narratives are pushing the limits of TV storytelling

Washington Post

30-04-2025

In the final stretch of Max's hit medical drama 'The Pitt,' a mass casualty event at a music festival blitzes the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. Under the fluorescent, windowless glow of the emergency wing, exhausted surgeon Michael Robinavitch (Noah Wyle), his overextended resident and student doctors, and the rest of the nursing and security staff race to save the dozens of severely wounded gunshot victims who are funneling onto their floor. They roll out gurneys, distribute blood bags and perform rapid surgeries, shouting out diagnoses and pinballing between patients to form a kind of hyper-intensive and chaotic ballet.
At first glance, this high-stress test might feel like an 'ER' redux. But unlike those of its foundational predecessor, each of the 15 hour-long episodes of 'The Pitt' unfolds in real time, depicting the unpredictability and relentlessness of a single, all-consuming hospital shift. There are no breathers, no scene breaks between shifts, no musical cues to buffer the action. Just a guiding principle: total, uninterrupted immersion — fueled by long takes, precise editing and a cacophony of overlapping clinical jargon.
'Time is a really big part of the emergency room experience,' series creator R. Scott Gemmill says. 'What we decided was to bring the audience into that experience, that environment, and not let them leave.'
'The Pitt' isn't alone in this pursuit. This spring, a few shows are tinkering with television's temporal and cinematic limits. On Netflix, 'Adolescence,' a riveting four-part British miniseries, chronicles the ripple effects of middle-school violence within a family and community using a bold narrative device: each hour-ish episode is a 'oner,' filmed in a single, unbroken take. Meanwhile, Apple TV+'s 'The Studio,' Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's satirical take on Hollywood execs, follows a similar maxim — nearly every scene (and its entire second episode) plays out in one continuous shot. Even 'Severance,' this year's buzziest show, starts its second season with a no-cut cold open, echoing the technique's usage in other prestige hits such as 'Barry,' 'The Bear' and 'Succession.'
With enhanced computer-generated imagery and featherweight camera technology, and fragmented audiences who are more distracted than ever with second-screen options, it's no wonder showrunners are expanding their narrative palettes and rethinking TV's stylistic and structural capabilities. If the goal is to obtain eyeballs, how can audiences look away when they don't know what's coming next?
That premise has informed the oner and other real-time narratives for decades on the big screen — just consider Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rope,' Orson Welles's 'Touch of Evil' and Martin Scorsese's introduction to the Copacabana in 'Goodfellas,' touchstones that redefined the way camera movement could toy with tension and perspective. More recently and prominently, however, the oner has been used (and sometimes abused) by auteurs and action directors looking to flex and adrenalize the complicated choreography of a Broadway production in 'Birdman,' or shootouts, hand-to-hand combat and warfare in shows such as 'True Detective' and films like 'Atomic Blonde,' 'Black Panther' and '1917.'
The oversaturation — and occasional self-indulgence — of these technical achievements has made their usage a bit predictable and one-dimensional, but has inevitably sparked innovation. What if, instead of presenting a soldier's trek through a war zone without blinking, the camera trailed a frantic Hollywood executive keen on instigating office shenanigans and brokering bonkers backroom deals?
In 'The Studio,' Rogen and Goldberg do just that, writing precisely timed walk-and-talks between colleagues in unbroken takes that help send up the absurdity of their Hollywood peers and their easily wounded egos. This is most prominently on display in the show's meta second episode, appropriately titled 'The Oner,' which tracks — all in one shot — a disastrous set visit by Rogen's studio head to a film attempting to pull off its own oner during magic hour.
'We wanted the show to have an immersive, manic energy to it,' Rogen told Esquire this year. 'Because that's our experience, being in these rooms with people yelling at each other. We wanted to throw you into it and create this sort of unpredictable, uneasy energy.'
There's a similar, palpable energy throughout 'Adolescence,' which wrings tension out of its episode-length oners without relying on intense showdowns and surprises. Created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham (who also stars), the miniseries opens with the real-time detainment and interrogation of Jamie (Owen Cooper), a 13-year-old accused of killing his classmate. The first episode's fluid structure explores the full scope and slow churn of an active investigation, observing the mundane procedures and crisscrossing movements of a police station, along with Jamie's (and his parents') real-time reactions to each stage of his arrest.
The one-shot approach invites even more emotional insight during the show's fourth episode, when Jamie's dad, Eddie, attempts to celebrate his birthday as his son's trial approaches. As he spends the morning at home and then runs an errand with the family, the camera captures a full life cycle of grief — Eddie switches between good spirits and unbridled anger, mood swings that eventually result in a teary breakdown. Rather than drumming up drama, the continuous take provides an unflinching time capsule of a broken man searching for answers.
Though Gemmill dabbled with oners while cutting his teeth on 'ER,' he ultimately refrained from implementing them in 'The Pitt.' The decision 'really comes down to what serves the story,' he says, a sentiment that veteran television writer and producer Robert King shares. A fan of the real-time phenomenon, he finds that the lyricism of 'The Pitt's' editing structure and its layered tableaux give it a vividness, energy and point of view that the more objective, observational oners in 'The Studio' and 'Adolescence' can't always achieve. 'You still have the crosscutting that is a requirement for any ensemble work,' King says, 'but what's great with 'The Pitt' is you can see that other level of action behind the foreground.'
None of these structural choices work without great actors, months of rehearsals and smart set design. The advances in equipment (such as drones, Go-Pros and lightweight Steadicams) have also allowed directors to more easily diagram handoffs between camera operators and enable an entire cast to operate like a real, synchronized medical team — or chaotic movie studio. Gemmill reveals that his team designed 'The Pitt's' stagelike set — with its numerous doors, wide hallways and open sight lines — before hashing out any scripts so that writers could take its geography into visual consideration. 'Everything was designed to be able to keep that movement and that visceral [element],' he says.
The ultimate goal is attention. Right now, it often feels as if there are two dimensions within the television landscape — shows that are designed as background noise with predictable narratives and shows that withhold plot to build suspense and cultivate week-to-week conspiracies to keep audiences theorizing. As 'Adolescence' director Philip Barantini explained in Netflix's press notes recently, these days, 'All of us — and especially the younger generation — are so used to watching short clips on their phones or on YouTube and getting a quick fix.'
But this latest trio of real-time shows offers the opposite: an opportunity to slow down, be present and embrace the uncertainty of every moment unfolding on screen. And in an era of endless dopamine distractions, that kind of sustained engagement might just be their boldest trick.