Berlin ER

Berlin ER (KRANK Berlin) was created by Samuel Jefferson, a former emergency-room doctor turned screenwriter, and Viktor Jakovleski, and produced by Violet Pictures and Real Film Berlin for Apple TV+ and ZDF. It premiered on Apple TV+ in February 2025, eight episodes directed by Alex Schaad and Fabian Möhrke, and later that year won Best Drama Series at the German Television Awards, the country's main television prize. A second season was announced in September 2025.

The setup is lean. Haley Louise Jones plays Dr. Suzanna Parker, who takes over the emergency department of a Berlin hospital that is underfunded, understaffed and permanently over capacity. Slavko Popadić plays Ben Weber, one of the doctors who has learned to survive the place, and the ensemble around them (Şafak Şengül, Aram Tafreshian, Samirah Breuer, Bernhard Schütz and Peter Lohmeyer) fills out a ward where the patients are drawn from every corner of the city. Jieun Yi and Tim Kuhn's camera stays close and handheld in corridors lit by strip lights, and the pace rarely lets up.

Medical drama is one of television's oldest forms, and the series knows it: the English title is a direct nod to the American template. What sets it apart is Jefferson's clinical experience and its view of a public health system under strain, closer in spirit to This Is Going to Hurt than to network melodrama. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes were unanimous, and the German Acting Awards recognised the cast as a whole with their ensemble prize.