From novel to movie, now "The Glory of Team Batista" comes to TV

by Chris MaGee

Yoshihiro Nakamura's medical thriller "The Glory of Team Batista" is coming to the small screen in Japan. Based on Takeru Kaido's bestselling 2005 novel of the same name the film starred Yuko Takeuchi (Ringu, Heaven's Bookstore) as Kohei Taguchi, a physician assigned to lead an investigation at Tojo University Hospital after a series of deaths occur during operations using the Batista procedure, a new alternative to heart transplants. Dr. Taguchi is assisted by Shiratori, an unorthodox health ministry investigator played by Hiroshi Abe (Survive Style 5+).

Don't expect the film's stars to be going up against medical mysteries on a weekly basis though. "The Glory of Team Batista: The Series", which will premiere October 14th on Fuji TV, reverts back to its original source material with Dr. Taguchi being a male character played by Atsushi Ito (Battlefield Baseball, Boy's Choir) while Shiratori has been recast and will be played by actor Toru Nakamura. I guess unless the folks at Fuji TV are amazingly progressive we'll have to scratch the suffocating sexual tension between the series leads that gets trotted out so often in television drama.

Thanks to Tokyograph for the details on this story.