Insights into the new Ryan Murphy drama with Joshua Jackson and Don Johnson (exclusive)

In 1977, ABC caused a stir with The Love Boatand now, 47 years later, the network is once again trying to make a high-seas hit set aboard a luxury ocean liner. And since it comes from the mind of Ryan Murphy, the super-producer behind the action-packed 9-1-1 Duo and the exaggerated American Horror Story Franchise, something exciting and new awaits you.

“This is Ryan's fantasy version of a cruise ship,” agrees star Joshua Jackson during a break in Los Angeles. “The stakes are high, everything is high, but it also plays [at times] like a comedy and is mostly just relaxed and easy-going.”

After spending the last few years in such dark twists and turns as The affair, Dr. DeathAnd A fateful affairThe Dawson's Creek: The mysterious setting Favorit is visibly excited that his first network TV role since Fox' Edge area is a much more cheerful guy. “Yes, that's perhaps the most uncomplicated person I've ever played,” he admits about Max Bankman, a doctor from Connecticut who takes the job as ship's doctor on board the fictional (and fabulous) Odyssey Cruise ship after a near-fatal battle with COVID.

“He's a do-gooder from the East Coast, an Ivy League university, who graduated top of his class and joined Doctors Without Borders,” Jackson explains. “Then he spent weeks in isolation during the COVID pandemic, on the edge of limbo: 'Is he going to make it or not?' and after that he decided, 'You know what? I need to go and disconnect from everything. I need to just start over.' And that's exactly what he's doing.”

In the opener, Max meets his new team, which mainly consists of nurse Avery Morgan (Radiant girls Alum and Hamilton Tony nominee Phillipa Soo) and her colleague Tristan Silva (The Gifted's Sean Teale), as well as the OdysseyThe avuncular Captain Robert Massey was played with great charm by Don Johnson. “He's a mix of men I've known in leadership positions in my life,” the actor notes. “The ones who are most effective are the kindest. They know how to get people to follow you; they command respect rather than demand it.” Johnson compares Massey's Merrill Stubing-like approachability to a comfort food for a sailor's soul: “He's like mac and cheese.”

According to executive producer Jon Robin Baitz, the entire ensemble is a late-night buffet of magnetism. “They're so charming. I can't even describe the chemistry between the four of them. It's like going back to the studio system of the '40s. It's so incredible. Together they're just a perfect painting, all of them.”

Disney/Tina Thorpe

The ship itself is just as striking. “The scenery is absolutely breathtaking,” enthuses Baitz. “The Odyssey is very, very high quality, so the stages are luxuriously equipped.” This splendour is not only reserved for the pimped-out facilities of Max and Co. “We have everything. We have the engine room, we have crew quarters, we have the bridge, we have bars, we have the dining room, the [main] Hall.” In addition, there is an impressive but still secret list of guest stars who book passage on the ship, giving the series a Ritz-Carlton-with-portholes energy. In fact, Baitz reveals that “when Ryan and Joe [Baken, who created the series with Murphy and Baitz] when I started talking, the first thing I said was: “Tonight we're going home and watching Grand Hotel.'” Jackson puts it this way: “It's as if the spaceship from Wall-E had a baby with the set design of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby.”

Of course, behind the glamour and the magnificent scenery lies the fast-beating heart of an adrenaline-fuelled medical drama that is unlike most. “Being on a ship involves a lot of risk and there are fewer resources,” Soo points out. “We are so far away from land and the things that happen in an emergency room in a [normal] Hospitals are not necessarily accessible to us. There is a level of ingenuity that comes into play that is really fun to watch.”

Whether it's a disaster on the Lido deck or something even worse, you can look forward to weekly footage of these docents saving lives through their quick response. “It's insane,” Jackson says, laughing, as he talks about the crises they've filmed. “I've had to get a taste of all kinds of bad things over the course of the last month and a half.” Still, “the mood is joy, if you will,” he adds. “[Ryan] want this world and the characters to sparkle.”

And honestly, it's just what the doctor ordered.

Doctor Odyssey, Series premiere, Thursday, September 26, 9/8c, ABC