Chicago Hope was a popular CBS drama series created by David E. Kelley that ran from September 18, 1994 to May 4, 2000. It took place in a fictional private hospital, Chicago Hope. The show starred Mandy Patinkin as Dr. Jeffrey Geiger, a hot shot surgeon with emotional problems stemming from the psychiatric condition of his wife, played by Kim Greist. Adam Arkin played Patinkin's colleague and best friend and Peter MacNicol and Hector Elizondo featured as house counsel and director of medicine respectively. Christine Lahti joined in the second season as a talented cardiac surgeon with a feminist chip on her shoulder who vies with Patinkin for the chief of surgery position. The pilot episode of Chicago Hope was broadcast the day before NBC's ER, however, after that first week the two shows went head-to-head in primetime, Thursday night at 10pm. Despite the critical acclaim that Chicago Hope received, ER's first season proved a ratings winner and in 1995 Chicago Hope was moved to Monday nights at 10pm. The show stayed in that slot and performed well, with ratings peaking at 11.9 and 20% share, however in the second season Kelley and Patinkin decided the leave the show and Chicago Hope began its slow descent to cancellation. In 1999 both Kelley and Patinkin returned with a revamped cast including the additions of Barbara Hershey and Lauren Holly and the loss of Lahti, Peter Berg, Jayne Brook, Vondie Curtis-Hall, and Stacy Edwards. They also moved the show back to Thursday nights against NBC's Frasier and ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, though, proved too daunting of a task, and the show was cancelled in May 2000. In the UK, seasons 1 and 2, originally aired on BBC One. More recently all seasons of the show have been shown on ITV3. In the USA episodes air on The Discovery Health Channel but the last episodes of season 6 and the first episodes of season one do not usually air.

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Theme Song '94
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