Actor Kelsey Grammer is attached to star in POPS, an NBC drama in development inspired by a Maryland volunteer emergency medical technician who started that chapter of his life in his 60s.
“I think that it’s fine for anyone to retire from their career. It’s another thing to retire from life,” retired EMT Ed Levien told WTOP in an August 2025 interview, long before news of the television project.
According to Deadline, the FRASIER star will headline and executive produce POPS, playing a man pushed out of a successful career who seeks a fresh start in emergency medicine. His fellow first responders are half his age. Writer-producer Danny Weiss, whose credits include CHICAGO MED, is writing the project.
For now, development is the important word. Deadline described a potential series, not an NBC series order, and its report supplies no premiere date.
The real-life story behind the proposed drama has a different kind of appointment book: ambulance shifts, training sessions and calls from people who need help. Levien retired from advertising at 64, then found his next purpose at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad.
In WTOP’s interview, Levien recalled passing a sign seeking volunteers and initially imagining he might become a dispatcher. Instead, he studied for six months and went on to spend 12 years volunteering as an EMT. WTOP reported that he had answered thousands of calls.
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The work was not something he simply stepped into without preparation. The rescue squad’s application process includes an interview, physical and background check and probationary class. It also offers administrative membership for people helping behind the scenes with functions such as fundraising and development.
The squad describes its mission as providing emergency medical, fire and rescue services in Montgomery County, Maryland. Its EMTs, firefighter/EMTs and paramedics respond to emergencies ranging from heart problems and strokes to vehicle crashes and fires.
By the time of his August 2025 interview, Levien had stopped going on calls but still helped train the next generation. He told WTOP that he wanted to give younger members the benefit of experience they could not get in a classroom.
His example also reached a national audience. Bethesda Today reported in October 2025 that his appearance on THE KELLY CLARKSON SHOW brought a $10,000 donation from ADT to the rescue squad. Fellow EMT Ella Edwards appeared with him and credited his training with helping her respond when a man suffered cardiac arrest.
Grammer’s project brings that service-centered story to a writer with substantial medical-drama experience. Deadline reported that Weiss spent 10 seasons on CHICAGO MED, rising to co-executive producer, and previously worked as an in-house medical researcher on HOUSE.
Grammer, Weiss, Levien and Jordan McMahon will executive produce, with Grammnet NH Productions and 3 Arts Entertainment involved and Universal Television serving as the studio, according to Deadline. Levien’s participation connects the development team to the man whose second career inspired the premise.
Whether POPS reaches the screen remains an open question. But the story it hopes to tell already has a real person at its center: someone who found that leaving one profession did not mean he had run out of useful work to do.
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