Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dr. Death’ Season 2 On Peacock, A Fictional Account Of The Real Life Fraud Committed By Dr. Paolo Macchiarini

The scripted anthology series Dr. Death, based on a hit Wondery podcast, is supposed to show what happens when medical professionals become convinced that they can bend medical science to their will, whether what they’re doing is actually saving lives or just puffing up their own images. The second season of the series is based on the case of Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, who implanted artificial tracheas in at least a half-dozen patients who trusted that he knew what he was doing, with tragic results.

DR. DEATH SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: People chanting “Shame!” in Swedish outside a court in Stockholm. A reporter discusses the medical misconduct trial of Dr. Paolo Macchiarini (Edgar Ramírez).

The Gist: Season 2 of Dr. Death is about the fraud committed by Dr. Macchiarini, a doctor in regenerative surgery who claimed to have devised a revolutionary method to transplant artificially-created tracheas into patients. His discovery is that the trachea implant would be infused with a patient’s stem cells, “tricking” the body into thinking the implant is a natural part of the body.

The first episode plays out during three timelines. In London in 2011, one of Macchiarini’s first human patients, Keziah Shorten (Gaby Slape), is seen catching a bus, wheezing and coughing as she carries an oxygen tank on her back. She’s then on an operating table, with Macchiarini and his crew putting her under anesthesia.

In New York in 2013, Dateline producer Benita Alexander (Mandy Moore) is at a bar, celebrating the birthday of her friend and co-producer Kim (Judy Reyes), when she gets a call that her ex-husband John (Jason Alan Carvell) is in the hospital. He has an inoperable brain tumor, and he was found passed out at home. There’s only a six percent chance treatment will be successful, but Benita’s mantra is that “someone has to be in the six percent.” They still haven’t told their nine-year-old daughter Lizzi (Celestina Harris) about his prognosis.

In Stockholm in 2012, Macchiarini is introduced at the Karolinska Institute by its director (Jack Davenport), where he makes a presentation about his revolutionary procedure, using Keziah as a successful example of an earlier phase of his procedure that infused a donor trachea with stem cells. Two doctors who will be working with his patients are at the presentation: Dr. Ana Lasbrey (Ashley Madekwe), a surgeon who is also studying regenerative methods, is interested in seeing Macchiarini in action. Dr. Nathan Gamelli (Luke Kirby), who will be caring for his patients post-op, has questions about how the body actually accepts the implant, which Dr. Macchiarini sidesteps. He also recruits Dr. Anders Svensson (Gustaf Hammarsten) to help him with the rat trials he wants to do with the implants.

Back in 2013 New York, Alexander is preparing a special about revolutionary medical technology and is focusing on a case Macchiarini is working on in Chicago, a little girl with an underdeveloped trachea whose family flew from South Korea. The procedure is the family’s last hope that the girl can survive. When she meets Macchiarini to get some background about him and the operation, he expresses that the operation is risky and controversial, but if he can save this girl’s life it’ll be worth it.

In Chicago for the girl’s surgery, Alexander talks more with Macchiarini, and the longer she talks to him, the more she’s convinced that he has the patients’ best interest at heart. Things also get a bit personal, as he convinces her to clue Lizzi in on her father’s condition. She witnesses the lengthy and delicate procedure, which seems to be a success. In the hotel afterwards, the two of them end up in bed together, which Alexander regrets the next morning.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? While there are similarities between the story in Dr. Death‘s second season and the one presented in Season 1, the inevitable comparison will be between this fictionalized telling of Macchiarini’s story and the Netflix docuseries Bad Surgeon: Love Under The Knife, which concentrates on both the doctor’s misdeeds and the relationship he had with Alexander.

Our Take: There is a disclaimer at the beginning of the first episode (and, we presume, the other episodes) of Dr. Death that makes pains to tell the viewer that the story being presented is fictionalized. But writer and showrunner Ashley Michel Hoban (Jennifer Morrison is an EP and directs the first four episodes) seems to have taken a lot of liberties with a story that’s already pretty explosive. Those liberties don’t even make a whole lot of sense.

The biggest thing is that Alexander is given a family situation that she didn’t have in real life at the time she met Macchiarini. She was a single mother and her ex-husband did indeed die of cancer in 2013. But it seems like this is given a whole lot more emphasis in the story than Alexander herself gave it in Bad Surgeon and various other docuseries, and the podcast. Is it there to explain the state of mind Alexander was in when she gave in to Macchiarini’s charms? Or is it there to make Alexander look less like the hard-driving journalist she actually was? There’s obviously some narrative reason why these liberties were taken, but we can’t for the life of us figure out why.

Part of how Macchiarini was able to not only snow Alexander but the medical community and, most tragically, his patients was that he was charming and dripped sincerity. When he told Alexander that he had celebrity clients like the Obamas and that he worked with the Vatican, he did it in a way that was believable. And while Ramírez effectively communicates the doctor’s sincerity, we’re not quite sure where the charm is. He’s extremely serious, but it wasn’t just his seriousness and sincerity that sucked in Alexander. It was his sense of adventure, his massive romantic gestures, his seemingly endless wealth, and his worldliness that got her attention. By the the time Macchiarini and Alexander hook up at the end of episode 1, that scene feels more of a left turn than it should have been.

As much as we love Moore as an actor, we’re not convinced she’s the right person to play Alexander. Not only is she a little younger than Alexander was at the time she met the doctor, but there are scenes where she plays Alexander as the hard-driving journalist she was and there are scenes where she channels her This Is Us character Rebecca Pearson. While that may be seen in some circles as making Alexander multifaceted, we just see it as an inconsistent characterization.

We don’t get into the doctor’s medical malfeasance in the first episode, and the trio of doctors he met in Stockholm will be instrumental in blowing the whistle on him. But it’s not like, in the person of Dr. Gamelli, we don’t get some pretty obvious foreshadowing of what is to come. He expresses doubt, Macchiarini sidesteps the doubt, and no one seems to notice.

The three timelines are also a distraction, given how close they are together. Yes, we get how showing things in a linear manner might not have been as interesting, but it feels like we’re getting whiplash going from 2011 to 2012 to 2013. The idea is that we get to see his relationship with Alexander play out at the same time we see him start to implant the artificial tracheas into patients, all of whom will violently reject the implants before passing away, but the ping-ponging between timelines was more annoying than anything else.

Sex and Skin: When Macchiarini and Alexander have sex near the end of the first episode, we just see them from the shoulders up.

Parting Shot: Keziah Shorten sits up in her hospital bed, suddenly unable to breathe. She coughs and blood comes out.

Sleeper Star: We hope that Judy Reyes, who plays Alexander’s friend and colleague Kim, is there to me more than just that supportive friend who wonders what Alexander has gotten herself into.

Most Pilot-y Line: “If I can handle myself around sexy, charming Obama, I can handle myself around sexy charming doctor,” Alexander says to Kim, then they both say in unison, “You don’t fuck your sources,” as if that was the first lesson they learned in journalism school.

Our Call: SKIP IT. If you want to find out about Macchiarini’s case, watch either Bad Surgeon or the documentary that Peacock made that accompanies this season of Dr. Death. Both will be more interesting and informative than this misguided season of the scripted series.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.