What Time Is ‘The Good Doctor’ on Tonight?

If you’re as big a fan of Freddie Highmore’s new project as the other 17.9 million people who watched Oct. 18’s episode of The Good Doctor, you’ll be excited to learn that the new ABC medical drama is in full swing.

The seventh episode of The Good Doctor airs Monday at 10 pm on ABC. The network ordered a full 18-episode season of the new show after experiencing highly successful numbers during its first few episodes.

In fact, the Sony Pictures Television Studios-produced drama from showrunner David Shore (House) is outpacing the numbers that last fall’s breakout hit, This Is Us, was pulling last season by 28 percent. And that Oct. 18 episode that pulled in 17.9 million viewers topped CBS’ The Big Bang Theory as the most-watched series across all of TV.

“We have done incredibly well with the young female demo,” ABC Entertainment Group president Channing Dungey told The Hollywood Reporter. “A lot of that is due to the charm of Freddie Highmore, who’s not only an incredibly talented actor, but a very charming individual who seems to have developed an enormously large fan base of young women.”

But fans might be shocked to learn that Highmore, who was “exhausted” from finishing up his work on A&E’s Bates Motel, initially passed on the role before ultimately accepting it — with a smaller commitment of 18 episodes versus 22.

“It wasn’t really a sense of having passed on it; [it was] needing more than three days to make the decision to jump from one television show into another one,” Highmore told THR. “I finished Bates Motel, and this sort of huge, climactic last scene for Norman [Bates], and three days later I was down in L.A. having read the script and meeting with David Shore.”

What’s more is that the role of Shaun Murphy, a surgeon with autism and Savant syndrome, could have turned out entirely differently — because show executives originally wanted an actor who was previously unknown.

“We thought with that character, you didn’t want anybody bringing a persona to the role — that you really needed to just allow the audience to fall in love with somebody new and somebody fresh,” Sony Pictures Television co-president Jason Clodfelter said. But those casting sessions failed to bear fruit, and in Highmore, they found a star whose relative high profile was balanced by his chameleon-like qualities as an actor.

“I think he’s a good enough actor and a subtle enough actor, and he’s able to right away make us forget any of his previous roles,” Shore says. “He did that for me, in a sense, when I met with him.”

While The Good Doctor is winning the numbers game, the feel-good drama has been received with mixed reviews from critics, who have called it “overwrought,” “mawkish,” “glib” and even “shameless.” In spite of its supersized ratings, those on the receiving end of the critical lashings lament the show’s reception as a lightweight. “I wish [the critics] would [like it],” Shore said.

Shore assigns some of the criticism to the fact that the show’s home on network television doesn’t allow for it to be as dark or edgy as other shows on streaming services.

“Our show is not cynical, dark or edgy,” Shore said. “And our show is a network show as well. And I think it is difficult for that kind of show to get positive notice from the critics.”

Even with average reviews, the skyrocketing numbers from the new show will likely end up in an order for a second season — but viewers will have to wait to find out.

The Good Doctor airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on ABC.