Actor/producer/movie star George Clooney played Dr. Doug Ross on the popular hospital drama ER until the movies — and even more enormous fame — stole him away from American living rooms. Clooney left the ER fold in 1999 and never returned to regular television. (Clooney did appear on ER as a guest in a 2009 episode.)
By requiring a trip to the theater to see him work, Clooney pretty much took a page out of Jack Nicholson‘s playbook — Nicholson always prided himself on never appearing on TV, only in the movies. But it’s a different time and one could argue that TV has supplanted the movies as the true glamour medium. (Though it might be hard to tell this to A-listers like Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence or Robert Downey Jr. who stick to the big screen.)
But the evolving TV landscape is proving it exerts enough magnetic pull these days to lure even a star of George Clooney’s magnitude. And so for the first time in 20 years, Clooney will again be a TV star. Clooney will star in the new Hulu series Catch-22, which he also produces and directs.
If the title sounds familiar it’s because the title of Joseph Heller’s certified classic war novel, Catch-22, has entered the English language. A catch-22 is defined as “a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.” (The film of Catch-22 directed by Mike Nichols also impacted the culture, being called “an American classic.”)
Of Heller’s book, famous writer Norman Mailer said: “Heller is carrying his reader on a more consistent voyage through Hell than any American writer before him.” Hugh Laurie and Kyle Chandler also star in the hilariously devastating Hulu series. Catch-22 premieres on Hulu on Friday, May 17.
