ABC Renews Fan-Favorite Medical Drama for Another Season

Dr. Shaun Murphy and the doctors at St. Bonaventure Hospital in San Jose earned job security on Monday. ABC renewed The Good Doctor for a fifth season, making it the first scripted show from the network to be guaranteed a slot on the 2021-2022 TV season schedule. The series stars Freddie Highmore as Shaun, a talented surgeon with autism and savant syndrome.

The Good Doctor is produced by Sony Pictures Television and ABC Signature. The series averaged a 2.98 18-49 rating this season after 35 days of delayed viewing and digital platforms are taken into account, reports Deadline. The show's audience averages 12.1 million total viewers. Season 4 kicked off in November and will finish its 17-episode season on Monday, May 17 at 10 p.m. ET.

The medical drama was developed by David Shore and is based on the South Korean show of the same name. Actor Daniel Dae Kim is one of the show's executive producers and starred in the show's second season. Highmore also serves as an executive producer. The rest of the main ensemble cast includes Antonia Tomas, Beau Garrett, Hill Harper, Richard Schiff, Will Yun Lee, Fiona Gubelmann, Christina Chang, and Paige Spara.

This marks the second consecutive season where The Good Doctor became the first ABC scripted series to be renewed. The network still has several big decisions to make and is now reportedly in talks to bring Grey's Anatomy back for Season 18 after showrunner Krista Vernoff signed a multi-year deal with ABC Signature. Now, the network is in talks with Ellen Pompeo, Chandra Wilson, and James Pickens Jr. to bring them back.

Meanwhile, The Conners is close to being renewed for Season 4 now that its stars have signed on. ABC has not made decisions on the dramas Station 19, A Million Little Things, Big Sky, For Life, Rebel, and The Rookie for next season. The network also airs the sitcoms American Housewife, Black-ish, Call Your Mother, Home Economic, The Goldbergs, and Mixed-ish.

The Good Doctor Season 4 notably started with a two-part episode about the coronavirus pandemic's impact on the St. Bonaventure team. However, beginning in Episode 3 "Newbies," the show shifted to a future after the pandemic. Chang, who plays Dr. Audrey Lim, told PopCulture @Home it was "meta" to film the coronavirus episodes.

"We were in the pandemic still, as we still are," Chang explained in January. "So experiencing that in our daily lives and then coming to set — of course, the protocols they have in place are fantastic, and so we're all masked and gowned there and then on camera, masked and gowned and living, telling the stories of what a lot of people globally were experiencing and continue to experience." The Good Doctor is available to stream on Hulu.

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