• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, February 23, 2024

With the challenges of health care on the minds of many, here comes an animated series that imagines a future when hospitals and medical care will be available throughout the galaxy.

It’s a cartoon commentary on universal health care -- literally.

The takeaway is that despite all the medical advances made between our present day and the setting of this show 11,978 years in the future (the year 14,002, to be exact), hospitals will still be screwed up.

Well, there’s your problem right there. From the teachings of Zager & Evans, we already know mankind will not survive until 11,978. 

In their famous song of the 1960s, “In the Year 2525,” this singing duo gave mankind 10,000 years (along with a billion tears) before “man’s reign is through.” And the years 2525 through 9595 weren’t so hot either.

With that in mind, perhaps this new, fanciful animated series -- “The Second Best Hospital In The Galaxy” coming to Prime Video on Friday -- means to distinguish itself from the Zager & Evans model.

After all, Z&E formed their vision of man’s future prospects in the midst of the turbulent 1960s -- a time of violence, superpower saber-rattling, uncertainty, fear and pessimism.

But since our current era is nothing like that, “The Second Best Hospital In The Galaxy” can afford to be optimistic.

Give this show an A+ for imagination. Credited principally to creator and showrunner Cirocco Dunlap, the show presents a world somewhere in the vast reaches of space where medical practices have evolved along with the transformation of all living things into beings far different than they are today -- humans, other mammals, fish, insects, basically everything down to the smallest microscopic organisms.

In the premiere episode, we meet various denizens of the hospital -- a pair of female doctors (although the word “female” in this case is fluid to say the least), some administrators, patients with odd ailments, a guy who fills the snack machine and others.

The show’s voice actors include “Succession” Emmy winner Kieran Culkin and “Poker Face” star Natasha Lyonne, who possesses a voice that is instantly identifiable.

The depiction of this future world and the interplay between all its evolved organisms is almost too successful. 

In the first episode, a storyline in which the two doctors pictured above fought a nasty parasite that had burrowed in a patient’s brain became so complicated that I spaced out on it.

One subject that I am pretty sure never came up in Episode One of “The Second Best Hospital In the Gallery” was the issue of health insurance.

If the patients in the show were insured, this was not mentioned. Maybe the best thing about medical care in the 150th century (if my arithmetic is correct) is that health insurance appears to have been abolished and the patients with parasites in their heads get the treatment they need anyway. 

“The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy” premieres Friday, February 23, on Amazon Prime Video.