Hollywood once used permanent sets for the dozens of Westerns it cranked out annually — the frontier town, ranch house and corral all in one convenient location, built to last. I sometimes imagine something similar for Japan’s endless procession of hospital dramas. They all seem to use one generic set, populated by full-time extras dressed as doctors, nurses and patients.
Izuru Narushima’s medical drama, “Koko no Mesu” (“The Lone Scalpel”), may unfold almost entirely in a hospital, but it is not a bland, antiseptic, standard-issue set. Instead it looks like the hospitals and clinics most of us encounter here: Scruffy and grimy, as though it has been a stranger to the paint can since it opened its doors decades ago.
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