Cue the synthesizers. Fade the color in. And go.

True, the Writers Guild of America strike — which may be resolved Tuesday — may have us all wondering just how long we’ll be forced to watch a 6-foot-1-inch, 205-pound spandex-clad blonde named Hellga pummel the lights out of a 20-something gym bunny. But the lack of good hospital drama these past months may just give us the previously overlooked opportunity to go back and rediscover the hospital series that started it all.

For those of us who spent most of the 1980s with our view obstructed by large shoulder pads and teased hair, or on a playground, or, you know, not yet born, “St. Elsewhere,” which aired on NBC from 1982 to 1988, serves as the architectural underpinning for “ER,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “House,” “Scrubs” and countless other medical shows. Set in the decrepit wards of St. Eligius Hospital in Boston’s inner city, the series follows a group of young medical residents struggling to cope with life and, more often, death, which was a strong departure from medical dramas that preceded it.

The 1950s and 1960s offered a host of M.D.-focused television shows — 1961′s “Ben Casey” or, later, “Marcus Welby, M.D.” These shows centered on infallible doctors, whose patients dropped to their knees with gratitude and awe. Like Richard Chamberlain as the young idealistic surgical intern and title character in “Dr. Kildare,” these characters were rarely challenged by moral or ethical dilemmas.

“St. Elsewhere’s” characters are unapologetically flawed and conflicted. The show weaves together elaborate webs of plot and subplot. The first season, the only one currently available on DVD, gives us episodes involving a sex change operation, the outbreak of a rare disease, a case of Munchausen syndrome, and a pregnant woman who threatens to open fire on whoever performed her husband’s vasectomy.

Later seasons delved even deeper, into issues of rape, gang violence, dysfunctional work/family relationships, racial tensions, suicide and drug problems. “St. Elsewhere” was one of the first TV shows to tackle the subject of AIDS — in Season 2 a local city councilman is diagnosed with the disease. Later in the series, Dr. Jack Morrison (played by a young David Morse, whose recent guest appearance on Fox’s “House” earned him an Emmy nod) is raped while volunteering at prison.

Where “ER” turns on gut-wrenching scenarios and a fast-paced environment and “Grey’s” sex lives play as prominent a role as the medical drama, “St. Elsewhere” struck a harmonic chord between beautifully orchestrated surgical procedures and the candid human side of the hospital’s staff. The show gave us a hospital of chaos and tragedy, where doctors don’t always do right and patients don’t always survive.

In its six-season run “St. Elsewhere” was nominated for 63 Emmy Awards, winning 13 awards. While the show never garnered huge ratings, peaking at 49th place on the yearly Nielsen report, a devoted audience provided the show with enough support to last its 137 episodes.

Yes, at times the show feels dated — even if you do ignore Dr. Wayne Fiscus’ (a Jheri-curled Howie Mandel) skinny ties or novice surgeon Dr. Victor Ehrlich’s (Ed Begley Jr.) thick-framed glasses and day-glo Hawaiian print shirts. Dialogue at times can feel overcharged and camera angles obtuse, lacking the subtle finesse of “St. Elsewhere’s” modern counterparts. See Season 1, Episode 2, “Bypass”: The camera pans to Dr. Craig’s loafers and up to his stern face. The doctor marches into the room of an overweight, middle-aged man and says, “Your father died of a heart attack when he was 42 … You’re walking a thin line, but I am going to save you. That’s right. [Exaggerated nod] Triple bypass.”

But while certain fashion statements, racial stereotypes and medical scenarios seem passé, the complex and overlapping plotlines, smart writing and character development render the series as compelling and relevant now as it was in its mid-’80s heyday, right down to Fiscus’ lunchtime discussion of why prepubescent girls are developing the bodies of Sophia Loren. (It’s the estrogen hormones in the fast-food hamburgers!)

Plus, let’s be honest, there are few things that can top a pre-blockbuster Denzel Washington playing an introspective Dr. Phillip Chandler who probes an amnesic patient. Well, maybe a young Tim Robbins as a bank bomber, dark lesions across his face, in a hospital gown with his right foot cuffed to a gurney, chain-smoking while telling nurse Helen Rosenthal (Christina Pickles) that the food stinks. Actually, maybe Christopher Guest as an ill-tempered hospital administrator in a three-piece suit.

So even though the 14th and possibly last season of “ER” is still on hold and we’re waiting to see what happens when Joshua Jackson finally makes his planned guest appearance this season on “Grey’s Anatomy,” the silver lining may just lie in the shows of our past. And while Fox 20th Century Entertainment representatives say they have yet to slate a DVD release for any of “St. Elsewhere’s” later seasons — meaning that we’ll all have to wait to revisit the “Snow Globe” series finale where it is revealed (20-year-old spoiler alert!) that the entire show was the fantasy of Dr. Westphall’s (Ed Flanders) autistic son, Tommy, Season 1 may just renew your faith in good television.

The series’ 17 half-hour episodes take Steven and his buddies from standard-issue stereotypes — in the pilot, our geeky hero rips up his “X-Files” poster as a sign of his willingness to blossom into social viability — to nuanced, if still slightly hokey, human beings who have developed something like distinct personalities after their first year at college.

“Undeclared” is a crucial step in Apatow’s apparent mission to string together a series of projects that will eventually form a time-lapse image of every conceivable stage of arrested emotional development. “Undeclared” nestles in most obviously behind “Freaks & Geeks,” another much-lamented one-season wonder that cast a nostalgic, autobiographical eye on the horrors of Apatow’s high school life in the 1980s.

Perhaps its historical setting is what helped make “Freaks & Geeks” more artful, precise and delicate in its unearthing of the discomforts of adolescence than “Undeclared,” which was supposed to be contemporary when it aired in 2001. “Undeclared” contains what now sound like painfully dated clunkers, as when Steven’s chiseled British roomie is told by his hot one-night stand, “We’re just like Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston,” and he replies with horror, “Yeah, except they’re married!”

But “Undeclared” was surely a little anachronistic even six years ago; many episodes involve open beer guzzling in public dorm space, a practice that may have been common when Apatow was matriculating in the late ’80s, but was strictly verboten even by the time I arrived in student housing a decade later. Now, as I understand it, even the frat houses are going dry.

The lack of chronological specificity, if you can skate over the Palm Pilot and video game references, makes “Undeclared” a lightly timeless tale about campus life, applicable to anyone who has ever heard the phrase hometown honey, found themselves sexiled, had a close encounter with the Campus Crusade for Christ or felt a little blue after a lecture on existentialism. The scene in which Steven’s friends Ron (Seth Rogen) and Rachel (Monica Keena) forcibly drag a fevered, flu-ridden Marshall (Timm Sharp) to the student health center will bring back memories for anyone who has ever resisted a trip to the infirmary until he puked, literally.

Much of the Apatow stable is in place in these episodes. There’s Rogen, whose wiseass slacker college freshman tellingly appears to be more mature here than his wiseass slacker 20-something from last summer’s “Knocked Up.” Baruchel will be familiar as one of “Knocked Up’s” leg-humping, bong-hitting, pink-eye sufferers. And Carla Gallo, whose Lizzie is mesmerizingly believable as the eager girl who I believed has lived on every freshman hall in history, is the toe-sucking chick from “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”

There’s a rogue’s gallery’s worth of cameos by Apatow friends, from Will Ferrell as a speed-freak video game addict who writes kids’ term papers for them to Fred Willard as a history teacher who spices up his lectures by dressing up as Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro. Most memorable is Amy Poehler as the spazz-tastic, randy R.A. who busts a move on hottie drama major Lloyd by making him role-play a scene in which he has to act like a young stoner girl approaching her for guidance.

In early episodes, “Undeclared” threatens to showcase the tight, angry visions of one-dimensional femininity that Apatow put on display in “Knocked Up”: The frosh girls are either panic-attack balls of anxiety, giggly caricatures of wide-eyed naiveté or just kind of slutty. This is a show created by and shot from the male point of view. Apatow does not even take a stab at imagining the inner lives of these beautiful, exotic, mysterious 18-year-old creatures. But that may cut to the blinkered heart of many an 18-year-old man’s perspective. And besides, the gals don’t really have much of an idea of what’s going on with the guys, either.

As the show matures a little, it becomes clear that in place of the vague bitterness about gender inscrutability in “Knocked Up,” “Undeclared” actually has the sweetness of heart about men and women that Apatow exhibited in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”: The Brit-boy roommate is caddish but emotionally sophisticated about Steven’s father’s crumbling marriage; Lizzie’s pathetic, mulleted, copy-shop employee hometown hottie turns out to have warmth and at least a modicum of depth. And it’s not just the guys who benefit from this generosity of spirit. Wifty homeopathic medicine devotee Rachel is direct and articulate and responsible about academics; sweet-as-pie girl next door Lizzie has a healthy sexual appetite, cheerfully bedding guest star Adam Sandler, playing himself.

“Undeclared” is a sitcom, and has all the unevenness of one. Viewing it in moderation is recommended; watching the 17 episodes on the complete series DVD back to back turns up every plot imperfection, continuity error and character inconsistency.

But as a good-humored reminder of what it might have felt like to be on your own for the first time in your life, you could do far worse than to visit the beer-soaked halls of the University of North East California.

“Slings and Arrows,” set in the fictional small town of New Burbage, ran for three seasons between 2003 and 2006. Each season consists of six episodes and is set during the time of the New Burbage Festival, the town’s cultural (and touristic) mainstay. At the heart of each season is the production of one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies — “Hamlet,” “Macbeth” and “King Lear.” The tragedies mostly provide ballast for the show’s comedy: a witty, sometimes giddy but always gloriously precise backstage satire that regularly takes flight into the sublime.

At the beginning of the first season, the New Burbage Festival is one of those staid, well-upholstered operations that draw a steady flow of aging subscribers but never quite manage to support themselves. “You don’t make demands on the audience,” an unctuous critic tells the artistic director, Oliver Welles (Stephen Ouimette). “You soothe them.” Everyone involved with the theater seems at least partly checked out. We see the rich husbands of matronly donors eyeing the actresses’ cleavage and making a beeline for the bar, and even the stage manager keeps one ear tuned to the hockey game during the show. At the opening night cast party, Oliver’s leading lady, Ellen Fanshaw (Martha Burns), accuses him of “not caring,” of merely going through the motions, just before she perfunctorily picks up a bartender half her age.

Oliver and Ellen live under the shadow of an earlier triumph, a production of “Hamlet” whose incandescent brilliance was such that people still talk about it even though it ran for only three performances. Oliver directed, Ellen played Ophelia, and the star, Geoffrey Tennent (Paul Gross), was his friend and her lover. For reasons unknown, Geoffrey suffered a breakdown during the “Alas, poor Yorick” scene, jumped into Ophelia’s grave and fled the theater, ultimately doing a stint in a mental institution.

Now, seven years later, a soused Oliver passes out in the street on opening night and gets run over by a truck full of ham. (“Slings and Arrows,” like the Bard himself, is not above the occasional kernel of corn.) Geoffrey turns up at Oliver’s funeral, makes a speech damning New Burbage’s artistic complacency and Oliver’s toadying to corporate sponsors (“The whole town is a gift shop!”), and winds up getting named the interim artistic director. The next season’s key production? “Hamlet,” of course.

In each season of “Slings and Arrows,” a rumpled Geoffrey, cuffs flapping and collar awry, wrestles with an assortment of problems that mirror the famous dilemmas of each play. The first time around, he has to muster the guts to take over from Oliver, flush the decay out of the festival and come to terms with Ellen’s past betrayals. Geoffrey’s terrified of “Hamlet” itself, a situation not much helped by the presence of Oliver’s kibitzing ghost, who has lingered behind to help. “Apparently,” the specter explains, “there’s an afterlife, despite what they told us in university.”

Afraid to direct the play himself, Geoffrey is forced to hire his nemesis, Darren Nichols (Don McKellar), a leather-clad compendium of phony avant-garde clichés who, despite Geoffrey’s best efforts, returns at some point during every season. Darren insists on staging a “Hamlet” with live horses and flames (a perilous combination) and, zeroing in on the “rotten in Denmark” theme, instructs the supernumeraries to smell their armpits while standing in the background. In Season 2, he has the actors in “Romeo and Juliet” dressed like chessmen and forbidden to touch or even look at each other. (This, he claims, has something to do with “deconstructing the signifiers in the play.”)

There’s nothing terrifically innovative or edgy about “Slings and Arrows.” It even abides by the old theatrical convention of pairing the leading couple (Geoffrey and Ellen) with an ingénue and juvenile among the younger actors in the New Burbage company. (In Season 1, they are Luke Kirby as the Hollywood action hero Oliver hired to play Hamlet in a bid to boost the box office and the spectacularly adorable Rachel McAdams. Sarah Polley appears as the actress playing Cordelia in Season 3.) Chances are that what the show has to say about actors — that they are volatile, self-centered and neurotic; that they must work under conditions of excruciating vulnerability; and that at times they seem to be vessels of the divine — are things you already know.

But, in this case, the readiness is all. The writing in “Slings and Arrows” is flawless, without excess of any kind, including that of cleverness. The direction and editing are executed with perfect timing, and all of this helps to set off the great jewels of the series — the performances, naturally. Burns’ Ellen is an impossible woman, who never entirely loses our sympathy, even as she entangles a stoic income tax auditor in the baroque mess of her personal and financial life. Ouimette hovers with a Wildean exquisiteness between ponce and genius. Gross shambles and raves and yet always provides the story with a steady moral center. Even the most fleeting of supporting roles — a pair of poker-faced morticians, a brassy minister of culture, a self-doubting playwright — are rich and rounded.

In counterpoint to the actors, and providing “Slings and Arrows” with its most biting satire, is the front office, run by executive director Richard Smith-Jones (Mark McKinney) and Anna Conroy (Susan Coyne) as the woman whose title no one can remember but who “does everything around here.” McKinney (a member of Kids in the Hall) and Coyne are co-creators of the series, which guarantees that the agonies of “creative” never eclipse the travails of “business.” Geoffrey’s grapplings with his artistic demons are matched by Richard’s own ethical crises and Anna’s troubles with incompetent interns and stranded Bolivian flutists.

In Season 2, Richard falls under the spell of the diabolical Holly Day of Lenstrex Corp., one of the festival’s chief sponsors. Employing Machiavellian office politics, gymnastic sex and Nietzschean self-help pep talks, she persuades him to turn New Burbage into a “theatrical theme park” called Shakespeareville that, despite its name, will consist largely of gift shops and Broadway musicals. (Musicals are Richard’s not-so-secret passion, and in moments of high emotion, he invariably starts talking about the time he saw “A Chorus Line” at age 14.)

The best of Richard’s misadventures come in Season 2, when another corporate sponsor (a water bottler who specializes in getting people to pay for what comes out of their taps for free) gives the festival a grant, insisting that it can be spent only on “rebranding.” Ever impressionable, Richard winds up in thrall to one Sanjay, the head of a preposterously trendy advertising agency whose motto is “The truth is the new lie” and whose office is filled with roller skaters and kids playing video games. The resulting “shock campaign” features photos of ass cracks and dying crones with the words “Our Subscribers” stamped over them.

All this might make “Slings and Arrows” sound like a less hip version of “30 Rock.” The difference is that the New Burbage Festival isn’t producing “The Tracy Jordan Show,” but some of the greatest works of art known to humanity. And that’s a big difference. Each season, Geoffrey faces some seemingly insurmountable difficulty with his lead actor, and yet the moment finally comes when everything clicks, the camera moves in on the actor’s face and what happens next makes time stand still and your heart stop in your chest. William Hutt’s climactic turn as a dying curmudgeon playing Lear in the third season left me wrung out and weeping — and even Alec Baldwin has never done that. At the end of season, Geoffrey’s “Hamlet” a resounding success, the actors reel around backstage in ecstasy. McAdams flings her arms around Geoffrey and shouts, “Is there anything better than this?” Nope, not much.