The Good Doctor is one of the biggest TV hits of the year, but it was actually rejected TWICE before being made.

Lost star Daniel Dae Kim serves as an executive producer on the ABC medical drama and has been integral to the show from the beginning. After noticing the original version in South Korea, he acquired the rights and started to adapt it.

As he was a star of CBS's Hawaii Five-O at the time (which he has since left), Kim developed it for the network, only for them to reject it after looking at the script.

Sky

"CBS actually passed on it twice. That was really unfortunate to me, because they were my home studio. I really wanted to bring something home to them," he explained to The New York Times.

After they rejected it, Kim bought back the rights from CBS and teamed up with Sony's television arm, who brought in David Shore, creator of Fox's successful medical drama House, and his version began to attract interest.

The Good Doctor eventually landed at ABC and the rest is history, with the first half of its debut season pulling in around 17 million viewers for each episode in the US.

ABC/Eike Schrote

That's a bigger audience than CBS's NCIS and NBC's This is Us, making it the most-watched drama on network television. It's also ABC's most-watched Monday drama in 21 years.

The Good Doctor, which follows a young surgeon (Freddie Highmore) with autism and Savant syndrome, airs on ABC in the US and Sky Living in the UK.

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