Kids’ Lives at Heart of ‘ICU’ Stories

ABC lifted the documentary genre several notches this summer with its standout series “Houston Medical,” and tonight at 10, there’s more of the same excellence at work from the network.

“ICU” delivers a specialized take on the broader medical realities of the previous series, which took viewers inside the day-to-day dramas unfolding at a large Texas hospital. Tonight’s program, the first of four linked parts, is set in the cardiac Intensive Care Unit of Arkansas Children’s Hospital, where desperately ill kids and their families come hoping that they will still have a future together.

The cases examined teeter precariously on the patients’ need for heart transplants, and the nail-biting wait to locate a suitable donor organ. Add to the mix a colorful crew of medical miracle-workers, led by triathlete and surgeon extraordinaire Dr. Jonathan Drummond-Webb, and you have all the ingredients for compelling TV.

But executive producer David Doss and his staff leave nothing to chance, pumping up the energy and tension at every turn with split-screen storytelling, hand-held camerawork and even a jazzy, propulsive score. The doctors and nurses are introduced at the top of the show with such show-bizzy razzle-dazzle that you’d think you were settling in to watch “ER.”

But that’s part of the savviness behind these ABC documentaries; they’re built with such an eye to entertain, even as they inform, that you almost forget your favorite weekly drama is on hiatus for the summer.

ABC News’ Elizabeth Vargas narrates the stories behind the tiny patients and the people who treat them, helped along by onscreen graphics that dispense statistics and keep viewers breathlessly abreast of patient status: “The moment of truth--will Keegan’s heart pump on its own?”

But aside from all the technical and creative wizardry, it’s the simplest moments that will stay with you. The shots of the tiny bodies lying helplessly on huge metal gurneys, their chests heaving up and down; the married couple, both just 18, holding each other in the waiting room while their infant battles for life.

Or when a teen looks up from her hospital bed, fixes her teary eyes on the doctor and whispers, “Please don’t let me die.”

“Reality” television doesn’t get any more real than that.

Next week: Dr. Drummond-Webb finds himself with a different perspective on a medical crisis. As operating room nurse manager Jean Ann Phillips puts it: “Medicine is scary; you’re never in control of anything.”

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“ICU” premieres at 10 tonight on ABC.