Premieres Wednesday, September 23 (8/7c) on NBC

NBC is scrambling to find a replacement for ER. The network's star medical drama ended last year after fifteen seasons, leaving NBC the only network without any returning medical dramas to compete against FOX's House and ABC's Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice in the fall season. So NBC is launching two new medical dramas to make up for ER's absence. The first of these is Mercy.

Mercy is set to focus on three nurses, Veronica, Sonia, and Chloe. Just from looking at the three of them, you can tell that this series will be more like Hawthorne than Nurse Jackie. They're all very clean cut, and look like they'll be advocates rather than adulterers.

The three main cast members are Taylor Schilling as Veronica Callahan, a nurse who has just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq; Michelle Trachtenberg as rookie nurse Chloe Payne; and Jamie Lee Kirchner as Sonia Jimenez.

It's always hard to follow in the footsteps of an old favorite, but being one of the only two medical dramas on NBC for the fall season, Mercy stands to do rather well. It will probably get picked up for another season. And if it doesn't, NBC always has Trauma to fall back on.

You haven't seen inside a hospital until you've seen it through the eyes of those who know it best: its nurses. Veronica Callahan is one of those nurses. She just returned to Mercy Hospital from a tour in Iraq and knows more about medicine than all of the residents combined. Together with fellow nurses Sonia and Chloe, she navigates the daily traumas and social landmines of life and love both inside the hospital and out in the real world.

From executive producers/writers Liz Heldens (Friday Night Lights), Gretchen Berg & Aaron Harberts (Pushing Daisies), executive producers Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun, and Emmy Award-winning director Adam Bernstein (30 Rock, Rescue Me) comes a medical drama with a totally unique point of view. One-hour drama

Source: NBC