‘Doctor Odyssey’ may be the hot doctor show. ‘St. Denis Medical’ knows you want the funny doctor, too.

St. Denis Medical takes place in a hospital, but the new mockumentary series is more of a workplace comedy than a medical show.

The NBC sitcom follows an eclectic bunch of staff members, including nurses and doctors, at an understaffed hospital in rural Oregon. It’s a stark contrast to other medical shows on network TV right now, like 9-1-1 (which follows first responders in Los Angeles) and Doctor Odyssey (which is about the medical staff on a cruise ship). The long-running Grey’s Anatomy and Chicago Med, both set inside hospitals, deal with a lot more drama involving patients.

Allison Tolman, who plays the emergency department’s head nurse in St. Denis Medical, was a big fan of ER, which ran from 1994 to 2009. She told Yahoo Entertainment that it makes sense hospitals are such a popular setting for TV shows because of the possibility for “high drama.”

“Audiences like it because they know that each episode is going to be rife with life-or-death situations,” Tolman said. “I think the reason why a show like ours works is because we’re … like, ‘What if you worked in a place where it was the worst day of people’s lives, but also you just work there and it’s lunchtime?’”

Wendi McLendon-Covey plays the hospital administrator — one of the kookier characters in the series who’s always trying to cut costs while still making St. Denis into a “destination.” McLendon-Covey told Yahoo Entertainment that the character is “a little off, but she tries really hard.”

“Maybe they’re still using Windows 95 and she wants to put in a koi pond,” she said.

McLendon-Covey said the funniest thing about the show is the dynamic between co-workers.

“Sometimes they clash, but they always come back together because they have to … come to work and make it through the day,” she said. “You’re not supposed to be laughing [in a hospital] … it’s like laughing in church. You’re not supposed to do it. That’s why you do it 10 times more.”

St. Denis Medical is far from the only series about medical professionals on network TV, but its funny, awkward moments make it more comparable to The Office and Superstore than Grey’s Anatomy.

McLendon-Covey grew up watching “overwrought” doctor shows like Emergency! and General Hospital. Grey’s Anatomy constantly puts its characters in mortal and interpersonal peril, perhaps most famously in its Season 8 plane crash episode. On the high-octane series ER, a doctor is killed when a helicopter crashes into him. Even 9-1-1 ups the ante on chaos with a massive disaster at least once per season, from tsunamis to blackouts — most recently with a three-episode arc about the fallout from a bee swarm known as “bee-nado.” Doctor Odyssey recently went viral for airing a threesome among its three stars in the same episode as a suicide — just as theories that the whole series is a COVID-induced hallucination hit a fever pitch.

As other medical TV shows go off the rails, St. Denis Medical finds humor and heart in moments of mundanity, from Tolman’s character’s struggle to leave work on time to the consistent social ineptitude of a nurse (Mekki Leeper) who grew up in a cult.

“Hospital shows are never going to go away because everyone is always going to keep getting sick. That’s just the way it is,” said McLendon-Covey, who grew up watching the dramatic series Emergency! and General Hospital. “There’s endless potential.”

St. Denis Medical airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.