Dr. Shaun Murphy.
Freddie Highmore not in character. Look at the smile and eye contact.
ABC scored an early and surprise hit with filmed-in-Vancouver The Good Doctor. Why did people fall so hard for Freddie Highmore’s new surgical resident Dr. Shaun Murphy, an autistic young man with savant syndrome? Maybe because Shaun gets in trouble for not hiding what he’s thinking, like a toddler who’s unfailingly honest. But he isn’t mean and this isn’t a cynical show.
How big a hit is The Good Doctor? When delayed viewing is added in, David Shore and Damiel Kim’s hospital series is drawing a bigger audience this Fall than CBS’s NCIS and NBC’s This is Us, averaging over 17 million viewers an episode.
But you’d never know how big a show The Good Doctor is if you stopped by one of its on-location shoots in metro Vancouver. Surrey City Hall plays the exterior for San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital and Vancouver Community College on Broadway regularly subs in for interior hospital sequences.
Here’s Dr. Shaun Murphy catching up to one of his fellow surgical rookies. Freddie Highmore practiced this over and over before the cameras were rolling.
Dr. Claire Browne (Antonia Thomas), Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) and Dr. Jared Kalu (Chuku Modu)
The Good Doctor airs tonight at 10 p.m. on ABC in the United States and CTV in Canada.
Its fall finale is slated for December 4th.
