New hospital drama 'Anatomy' is little more than an 'ER' clone

Sometimes you can see an entire series flash before your eyes within the first 10 minutes of the pilot. It must be the same sensation a psychic gets when gazing into a palm and glimpsing the full arc of a life. ''Grey's Anatomy," ABC's new hospital drama, is the kind of TV product that's so instantly recognizable you feel like you've already dreamed it from premiere to finale. It might as well be over before it really starts.

The show, which debuts tomorrow at 10 p.m. on Channel 5, follows a pod of surgical interns trying to survive at the fictional Grace Hospital in Seattle. You guessed it: They don't sleep enough, they deal with arrogant doctors, they lose nice patients, they save nasty patients, and they sit outside looking at the stars and having painfully earnest talks about life. And of course, when they aren't flirting, they are competing. They're the same scrubs histrionics we've seen on every medical series since ''St. Elsewhere" arrived in 1982, including ''ER," ''Chicago Hope," ''Gideon's Crossing," and ''Presidio Med."

Which isn't to say that ''Grey's Anatomy" is a disaster. It's effectively cast, with actors who manage to bring some distinction to their familiar roles. Ellen Pompeo plays Meredith Grey, whose anatomy is the title's subject. (After tomorrow's episode, the show opens out into more of an ensemble piece; but initially, it's meant to be her story.) With her Renée Zellweger-ish face, Pompeo is surprisingly believable as a tough, bright student hoping to match her surgeon-mother's brilliance. And Sandra Oh, from ''Sideways," is a standout as the unsentimental Cristina Yang, whose brand of compassion comes in double-edged lines such as, ''You should get some sleep, you look like [expletive]."

Their likeability, though, is stretched thin by the scripts, which force all the characters into cutesy situations. By next week, the interns are roommates, and they are contending with tired male-female bathroom issues out of ''Ally McBeal." Also, in the premiere, Meredith sleeps with an attending doctor, Patrick Dempsey's Derek Shepherd, before realizing he's her new boss. That means the show is going to throw far too much faux Hepburn-Tracey banter at us.

And while the light-hearted flourishes in ''Grey's Anatomy" are insipid, the more dramatic medical plots facing these interns ring false. They resolve too conveniently. Like the poor man who gets shot in the head with a nail gun next week, they're full of holes.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.