ABC is developing another medical drama to join Grey’s Anatomy and The Good Doctor, but this one has a sports twist. In The Front Line, a professional athlete decides to join the medical profession. Good Morning America anchor Michael Strahan, who also made a successful jump from the gridiron to another field, is an executive producer on the project.
The Front Line will tell the story of Sebastian “Bass” Clark, a football player who becomes a medical resident, a transition some real-life NFL players have made. The show is set at a Pittsburgh hospital, where Bass and his fellow doctors save lives every day and take on high-stakes medical cases. According to Variety, the show’s logline promises “all the adrenaline, warmth and big-heartedness of a great sports movie.”
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Marc Halsey, an executive producer on Fox’s medical drama The Resident, wrote the pilot and is an executive producer. Strahan, Constance Schwartz-Morini, and Thea Mann are executive producing under their SMAC Entertainment banner. ABC Signature is producing the show. So far, ABC has only given The Front Line a script commitment, so the project still has several hurdles to jump over before reaching the small screen.
Halsey also worked on NBC’s Good Girls, Fox’s Rosewood, Prime Video’s Jack Ryan, and ABC’s Brothers and Sisters outside of The Resident. SMAC productions include ABC’s The $100,000 Pyramid, ESPN’s More Than an Athlete, the HBO shows The Cost of Winning and State of Play: Happiness,ย and the Showtime series Play it Forward. Strahan also hosts The $100,000 Pyramid for ABC.
Strahan successfully transitioned from NFL star to broadcaster after he retired from football. He is an analyst on Fox NFL Sunday and co-hosted Live! with Kelly and Michael with Kelly Ripa from 2012 to 2016. In 2016, he joined ABC’s Good Morning America as a co-anchor full-time after leaving Live. The Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted him in 2014.
The story of The Front Lines is not far off from reality, as several NFL players have joined the medical field after retiring. In April 2020, former Tennessee Titans safety Myron Rolle was one of the players who gained attention during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic for treating patients. Rolle was a neurosurgery resident at Harvard. He told CNBC his work on the field prepared him for helping patients. “You never know what the other opponent is going to throw at you, so in order [to be ready], you need to be able to be flexible,” Rolle said. “We all have to do that, and I think it’s something that we’re all embracing and doing the best we can.”ย
