A textbook pun
Grey's Anatomy was created by Shonda Rhimes and began on an American network in March 2005, as a short mid-season replacement. Its title is a pun on Gray's Anatomy, a famous medical textbook first published in London in 1858 by the surgeon Henry Gray, which is still in print and still used by medical students. Gray died of smallpox only three years later, aged thirty-four, after catching it while nursing his nephew, and the book's detailed drawings were the work of his colleague Henry Vandyke Carter. The show's heroine, MEREDITH GREY, gets her surname from the joke.
In 2019 it overtook a Chicago hospital drama that ran from 1994 to 2009 to become the longest-running American prime-time medical drama, and it has now passed twenty series and four hundred episodes. Its romances and heartbreaks make it a show for older teenagers and adults.
Seattle, filmed in Los Angeles
The hospital, first called SEATTLE Grace and later renamed Grey Sloan Memorial in memory of two of its doctors, is set in Seattle, but the show is filmed mostly in Los Angeles. The building seen from outside in the early series is a real office block in Seattle that belongs to a television station. Only a few of the original cast have stayed through the decades: Chandra Wilson, who plays Miranda BAILEY and has directed many episodes herself, and James Pickens Jr, who plays the chief of SURGERY, Richard WEBBER, have been there since the first episode, while Ellen Pompeo, who plays Meredith, stepped back from a starring role in 2023.
Intern, resident, attending
The words in the grid follow an American SURGEON's training. After medical school, a doctor spends a first year as an INTERN, then several more as a RESIDENT, working long shifts and learning to operate, before becoming an ATTENDING, the senior doctor responsible for patients and for teaching the juniors. British hospitals use different names for the same ladder, as our medical jobs page explains.
The show began with five interns: Meredith; the fiercely ambitious CRISTINA YANG, played by Sandra Oh, who won a Golden Globe for the part and left after ten series; GEORGE O'Malley; IZZIE Stevens; and Alex KAREV. Several of its writers and producers trained as doctors, and it employs medical advisers to make sure the SCALPEL work at least looks right, even if real surgeons point out that no HOSPITAL lets its interns do quite so much.
McDreamy and a song everyone knows
Meredith's great love is the brain surgeon DEREK SHEPHERD, nicknamed McDreamy, whose catchphrase is it's a beautiful day to save lives. His old friend Mark SLOAN is nicknamed McSteamy, and ARIZONA Robbins runs the children's surgery department.
The show is famous for its music. In 2006 it played Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol over the end of its second series; the song became a huge hit, and in 2019 it was named the most played song of the twenty-first century on British radio. Grey's has also started two spin-offs, Private Practice, set in Los Angeles, and Station 19, about a team of firefighters, which shared storylines with the main show in crossover episodes.