Set in a fictional Washington, D.C. hospital, the series first featured James Whitmore as a no-nonsense chief of staff, forced to deal with the outlandish antics of a young intern (Cleavon Little) and three nurses (Joan Van Ark, Reva Rose, and Nancy Fox).

The series was re-titled The New Temperatures Rising Show, and featured a new supporting cast: Sudie Bond, Barbara Cason, Jennifer Darling, Jeff Morrow, and John Dehner.

Asher and Screen Gems made a deal with ABC to cancel Bewitched a year earlier than contracts stipulated, thereby allowing them the opportunity to develop the two new sitcoms.

Entitled This is a Hospital?, and written by Sheldon Keller, it starred comedian Shecky Greene as a mischievous intern who Asher referred to as "Sgt.

Cleavon Little starred as Dr. Jerry Noland, a ghetto-raised intern who works on the side as the hospital bookie and finds humor in anything from an operation to a con job.

[8][9] Joan Van Ark played Annie Carlisle, the hospital's beautiful,[10] young, sexy[8] head nurse, who is "always covering up for the inept crew".

Little's casting reflected "pressure from the government and Negro organizations and concerned whites who believe that black representation on television was long overdue".

[25] In later episodes, Campanelli is seen having a brief romance with Nurse Turner's aunt (Beverly Garland),[26] Noland helps out a new intern (Bernie Kopell) who has a reputation for being a jinx,[27] and also performs a witchcraft ritual on a patient (Alan Oppenheimer) who thinks he has been cursed.

[31] There was some racially tinged comic bantering in the series, such as scenes with Noland giving cotton to a nurse and stating, "Honey, picking cotton is part of my heritage," or observing some adhesive strips labeled "flesh colored" and remarking, "Maybe this is your idea of flesh colored, but it wouldn't make it in my neighborhood."

[8] In his review of the premiere episode of Temperatures Rising for the Los Angeles Times, critic Don Page felt that James Whitmore was "totally wasted in this silly exercise" and that "guest Jack Albertson almost saves it with his portrayal of an annoyed senator.

She noted that Cleavon Little, Joan Van Ark, and Reva Rose were, respectively, "marvelous", "pretty", and "funny", and that Nancy Fox "wins this year's cute-as-a-kitten award".

[34] Barbara Holsopple, TV and radio editor for the Pittsburgh Press, noted that "ABC did a gutsy turnabout in taking the heavy drama out of a hospital and replacing it with comedy.

Fanning praised Little as "one of the comedy finds of any TV season", and Fox as "a fresh new face and talent giving promise of a long, successful career ahead".

[8][nb 5] Because one of the stars was black, some of ABC's affiliated stations in the southern and midwestern parts of the United States refused to air the series or broadcast it in a different time slot.

[47] Bonanza was entering its fourteenth year and offered up an ambitious two-hour season premiere dealing with the marriage of Little Joe Cartwright (Michael Landon).

[49][nb 7] According to Asher: "Temperatures Rising put Bonanza out of business and was beating Maude in the Los Angeles area until mid-season, when NBC switched to some heavy movies which hurt us".

[52] As early as November 1972, James Whitmore expressed a desire to leave Temperatures Rising, claiming that "the show [was] basically a broad farce and I didn't feel it was right for me".

At the time, Lynde was scoring second only to Peter Falk in TV popularity polls even though his sitcom, which aired opposite The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour on CBS, was floundering in the ratings.

"[17]Asher was replaced as producer by Bruce Johnson and E. Duke Vincent, whose previous credits included Gomer Pyle – USMC, The Jim Nabors Hour, Arnie, and The Little People.

[nb 8] They changed the title of the series to The New Temperatures Rising Show, and the tone went from lighthearted wackiness to a form of black comedy similar to The Hospital, a 1971 film written by Paddy Chayefsky, starring George C. Scott.

The sitcom became "a savage satire of the medical profession" with $185-a-day hospital rooms, incompetent, fee-splitting doctors, operations on the wrong patients, misread X-rays, and rampant malpractice.

The doctors, not the patients, are the customers; they're the ones the hospitals have to please ...[54]For this new season, Johnson and Vincent dropped Joan Van Ark, Reva Rose, and Nancy Fox from the series, leaving Cleavon Little as the only returning cast member.

[54][56] Also in the new cast were Barbara Cason as Miss Tillis, the head of administrative and accounting: "... who would let you bleed to death filling out forms",[55] Jennifer Darling as the romantically inclined nurse "Windy" Winchester, and Jeff Morrow as Dr. Lloyd Axton, a fraudulent surgeon who has published two books, Profit in Healing and Malpractice and Its Defense.

CBS continued to air Maude, and NBC introduced Chase, an hour-long crime drama starring Mitchell Ryan, in the same time slot.

[59][60][nb 9] The episodes produced by Johnson and Vincent included Dr. Mercy exploiting a 125-year-old Civil War veteran[63] and dealing with a strike by the doctors and nurses.

[65] Johnson and Vincent's favorite episode was one where the X-rays of a professional footballer are misread, resulting in him being placed by mistake in "Crutchfield's Traction", in which holes are drilled in his head and tongs inserted in them.

"[69] When John Mitchell and Barry Diller noticed that The New Temperatures Rising Show was failing, they contacted William Asher and asked him to salvage the series.

"[3] For the third format, the show reverted to its original title Temperatures Rising, and the proposed number of episodes was reduced from eleven to seven.

[71] The situations presented this time around included Dr. Mercy saving the life of a popular country music singer (Dick Gautier),[72] and setting up a surveillance system so that staff would be kept on their toes.

Andy Siegel, a comedy development executive for ABC at the time, felt the series failed because audiences did not want to watch a show displaying inadequate medical care, even though it was done in a humorous fashion.