Set in the celebrated and infamous L.A. stand-up comedy scene of the '70s, where the careers of most comedy superstars began, I'm Dying Up Here delves into the inspired and damaged psyches that inhabit the hilarious, but complex business of making an audience laugh. The series is based on William Knoedelseder's book of the same name.

A look at the professional and personal lives of the staff at New York's Knickerbocker Hospital during the early part of the twentieth century. Every day they must deal with lack of funding, personal conflicts, egotism, racial tensions, personal vices, drug addiction, affairs, closed minds, dated nigh-medieval medical techniques and them and their experimental new techniques being misunderstood by most, in order to keep the hospital going and give the ill the help they need. The pressure is enormous and leaves its mark on the souls of most of them.