Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Midnight Family’ On Apple TV+, About A Medical Student Who Rides Along With Her Family In A Private Mexico City Ambulance

There’s a reason why shows about paramedics and EMTs do well, going all the way back over a half a century to the premiere of Emergency! . Cases can be so varied, from dangerous to silly to unusual, it makes for a pretty compelling action-drama. A new Apple series from Mexico pairs this with both family and relationship drama, layering in a paramedic going to med school and a private ambulance industry that isn’t at all like it is in the U.S.

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Opening Shot: A woman hurries into what looks like a medical school building as the camera rotates.

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The Gist: Marigaby Tamayo (Renata Vaca) runs into the bathroom in that building, changes clothes and washes off the spatters of blood on her chest and hands. She grabs her lab coat and dashes to where an oral exam is being given. Her friend Bernardo (Itzan Escamilla) managed to shift them to the second group, but she’s still chided by the instructor for being late, even though she passed the exam with flying colors.

Everyone is under the impression that Marigaby parties the night away, but in reality, she works at night as a paremedic with her father Ramón (Joaquín Cosio) and brothers Marcus (Diego Calva) and Julio (Sergio Bautista). The family has run a private ambulance in Mexico City for as long as Marigaby can remember, and they can use her medical expertise, despite the fact that moonlighting is frowned upon by her school. As she says in a voice over, though, she also like the thrill of arriving on the scene and getting people in crisis stabilized and ready to go to the hospital.

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Private ambulances are necessary in a city of over 10 million people, especially given that the city only runs 100 ambulances. The operators are paid each time they bring in a patient, which means when a call goes out, Ramón and Marcus sometimes have to race and pull other tactics to beat other ambulances to the scene.

The first call of the night is just like this, and they roll up on a block party that’s so crowded that they can’t get through. Marcus and Marigaby run to the scene to find a woman with a broken nose and a none-too-happy husband and a father-in-law with a shotgun. They barely get out with the woman before a fight starts. Julio, who is too young to legally ride along, takes some initiative, much to Ramón’s stress.

Ramón is battling heart issues, which he is trying to keep secret from his kids. He also is back in touch with his ex-wife Letty (Dolores Heredia), who left the family three years prior in order to help her mental health. She now wants Julio to live with her, something Julio heard when he ditched school to hide in the ambulance. In the meantime, Marigaby is seeing Raul (José María de Tavira), one of the doctors at one of the hospitals their ambulance services.

The family gets called to a massive fire in an apartment building, and while they save a mother and her baby, they’re not as lucky with another victim, and Marcus lets a disconsolate Marigaby know that if she couldn’t save him, no one could.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Midnight Family is based on a 2019 documentary of the same name , though in tone, this scripted series feels somewhat like Station 19 meets Brothers & Sisters .

Our Take: The story that Midnight Family is based on is one that’s ripe for soapy relationship and family drama, and that’s the direction the show’s writers have decided to go in. Marigaby is going to be shown balancing her studies with her work in the ambulance, and trying to keep those two worlds from colliding. In the meantime, we’ll see Ramón negotiating letting Letty back into his family’s life while trying to deal with his heart condition, and we’re sure that Marcus will have a personal story at some point.

It’s an interesting dynamic. What’s going to win out, the medical school stuff or the paramedic stuff? The paramedic stories are always draws because of how crazy and varied the calls can be; layered with the whole competitive nature of private ambulances in Mexico City, those segments promise to have a lot of drama and action.

The medical school/personal stuff may or may not work. For now, it feels like an afterthought compared to the paramedic stories, with the main linkage being that Marigaby needs to keep her work with her family on the down-low so the faculty at med school doesn’t get wind of it. That will certainly drive some of the conflict, but how much of that conflict is yet to be determined.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: After the fire, the camera pans around all four members of the family, one at a time, as the contemplate life and death.

Sleeper Star: Sergio Bautista’s Julio seems to be the most mature member of the Tamayo family, even though he’s the youngest.

Most Pilot-y Line: When a cop pulls the ambulance over to check their licenses, Marcus tells him more than once that someone could die if they’re held up. The cop wasn’t buying it and neither did we.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Midnight Family comes off as a bit soapy at times, but we get to see an aspect of how the medical field works in a place like Mexico City, along with a bunch of rescues that might be thrilling, tragic, silly or all three.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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