nbc.com

Currently in its 14th season, Emmy Award-winning drama series "ER" is still one of the highest-rated dramas on television. Created by best-selling author Michael Crichton ("Jurassic Park") and John Wells ("The West Wing," "Third Watch") the series centers on the medical personnel in the emergency room of a Chicago hospital. Crichton is an executive producer, along with John Wells, Christopher Chulack and David Zabel.

A winner of the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award, the series has also earned 22 Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series in 1996, and 117 Emmy Award nominations -- holding the record for television dramas and tying NBC's "Cheers" as the all-time leading nominee in any genre. In addition, the cast has been honored with four Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Ensemble Performance in a Drama Series.

The venerated series stars Goran Visnjic ("Elektra," "Spartacus"), Maura Tierney ("Diggers," "Welcome to Mooseport,"), Mekhi Phifer ("8 Mile," "Slow Burn"), Parminder Nagra ("Bend It Like Beckham"), John Stamos, ("A Raisin in the Sun," "Jake in Progress"), Linda Cardellini ("Grandma's Boy" "Brokeback Mountain") and Scott Grimes ("American Dad," "Mystery, Alaska") as the staff of County General Hospital, a Level One Trauma Center where heroic doctors and nurses are faced with life-and-death decisions on a daily basis.

On staff are Dr. Luka Kovac (Visnjic), an ER attending physician from Croatia who is searching -- sometimes self-destructively -- for something to fill the void of his lost family and failed relationships; Abby Lockhart (Tierney), who made the professional transition from nurse to doctor and is making a serious effort to turn her personal life around; and Dr. Gregory Pratt (Phifer), now an attending with a checkered background that won't stop haunting him.

Newer additions to the staff of County General Hospital include: Tony Gates (Stamos), an Iraq war veteran who made ends meet as a paramedic, but now is a medical intern at County General; Neela Rasgotra (Nagra), a British-Indian surgical intern who arrived in Chicago after finishing her undergraduate degree in biophysics and molecular biology at Yale; Samantha Taggart (Cardellini), a nurse and spirited single mother determined to save lives in a place where nothing is taken for granted and Dr. Archie Morris (Grimes), the new attending who finds that his stringent methods don't always agree with everyone in the ER.

"ER" is a production of Constant c Productions and Amblin Television in association with Warner Bros. Television.