New NBC Show ‘Dr. Wolf’ Is Based on a Real-Life Neurologist
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The allure of the medical drama never gets old, and there’s no shortage of them on TV right now, from the juggernaut that is Grey’s Anatomy to newer hits like The Good Doctor, The Resident and New Amsterdam. But there are a couple of things that make the upcoming NBC series Dr. Wolf very different from your standard network hospital procedural. For one thing, the title character is a neurologist, meaning that the show will focus specifically on stories about brain diseases and damage, neuro-atypical individuals and potentially mental illness. And for another, the series is inspired by the story of a real-life pioneering doctor who helped to shape society’s understanding of the human brain.
Now that NBC has officially ordered Dr. Wolf to series, here’s everything we know so far about the show, including who is in the cast and when it might be released.
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What is Dr. Wolf about?
Dr. Wolf follows the story of a larger-than-life neurologist, Oliver Wolf (played by Zachary Quinto), who heads up a team of ambitious young interns at a teaching hospital. Per the show’s logline, it will follow Wolf and his team as they “explore the last great frontier—the human mind—while also grappling with their own relationships and mental health.”
The series showrunner is Michael Grassi, whose writing and producing credits include Riverdale, Katy Keene and Supergirl. The Riverdale connections are strong overall—the pilot episode of Dr. Wolf is directed by Lee Toland Krieger, who was one of the key writers on the long-running CW drama, and the shows also share an executive producer in Greg Berlanti. The series was ordered to pilot in January of 2023, and was given a series order in the fall.
Is Dr. Wolf based on a true story?
The series is inspired by the life and groundbreaking work of Oliver Sacks, the renowned British neurologist who wrote a number of books about his most unusual and perplexing cases, and about his experiences as a physician. A New York Times obituary published after Sacks’s death in 2015 noted that he “used his patients’ disorders as starting points for eloquent meditations on consciousness and the human condition” and that “in his emphasis on case histories, Dr. Sacks modeled himself after a questing breed of 19th-century physicians, who well understood how little they and their peers knew about the workings of the human animal and who saw medical science as a vast, largely uncharted wilderness to be tamed.”
Dr. Wolf is specifically inspired by two of Sacks’s books. The first is The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (1985), which chronicles a number of Sacks’s most compelling and unusual case studies, and takes its title from the story of a man with visual agnosia, an inability to recognize or differentiate objects and faces. The second is An Anthropologist on Mars (1995), another collection of case histories which focuses on neurodivergent patients with conditions such as autism. One of the patients he describes here is Temple Grandin, the animal behaviorist who’s since become a prominent speaker and autism advocate in her own right, and was played by Claire Danes in a 2010 HBO film.
Who is in the Dr. Wolf cast?
Zachary Quinto
Quinto plays the title role of Oliver Wolf, who is based closely on Sacks. Quinto’s breakout role on TV came in the mid-aughts when he played the villainous Sylar in NBC’s Heroes, and a few years later he found wider success when he was cast as Spock in J.J. Abrams’ rebooted Star Trek series.
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Ashleigh LaThrop
LaThrop is perhaps best known to prestige TV fans for her small but extremely memorable role in Season 3 of The Handmaid's Tale, in which she played Natalie, a fragile handmaid whose entanglement with June (Elisabeth Moss) ended in tragedy. She’s also appeared in Netflix’s The Kominsky Method, Amazon Prime’s Utopia and the final installment in the Fifty Shades of Grey movie series.
Tamberla Perry
Perry’s past credits include a recurring role in The Good Fight, where she played Judge Charlotte Hazelwood, All American: Homecoming and Ethan Hawke’s historical drama The Good Lord Bird.
Alexander MacNicoll
MacNicoll played Luke Holbrook in all 10 episodes of Netflix’s dystopian teen drama The Society, and had a longtime recurring role in Amazon’s acclaimed Transparent.
Spence Moore II
Moore played a recurring role on The CW’s teen football drama All American, and also recurred in multiple seasons of the NBC sitcom A.P. Bio. More recently, he appeared in We Are Who We Are, the HBO coming-of-age series from Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino.
What is the Dr. Wolf release date?
As of now, there is no release date for Dr. Wolf. Given the ongoing SAG actors’ strike, it’s unclear when most productions in Hollywood will resume filming, and only the pilot episode of Dr. Wolf has been filmed so far.
How many episodes are in Dr. Wolf?
The episode count for Dr. Wolf hasn’t been confirmed, but based on other recent NBC series orders, the season is likely to be 13 episodes long.
How to watch Dr. Wolf
Dr. Wolf will air weekly on NBC, and is also likely to be made available simultaneously on Peacock, the network’s streaming platform.
Is there a trailer for Dr. Wolf?
Not just yet, but watch this space!
