Six big words fill the screen of the 30-second teaser ad for the upcoming Cinemax drama The Knick: Coming Soon. Steven Soderbergh. Clive Owen. To any serious film and television viewer, you do not really need to know anything else.
But, in case you want a bit more context, The Knick is Soderbergh’s first major project that he is attached to since his retirement from film and the quick glimpse below promises a marvellously macabre time. The show takes place in New York City during the early 1900s at the Knickerbocker Hospital – the location whose nickname gives the series its title. It was one of the most revolutionary institutions in treating polio, alcoholism and gynecology, and the teaser is filled with some rather bloody, unorthodox stages of procedure.
Clive Owen is in the lead as doctor John W. Thackery, who seems enthralled by living “in a time of endless possibility.” The doctors and nurses of the titular hospital used many experimental methods for their operations and did it all without antibiotics, which should amount to a lot of interesting arguments about medical ethics. With a wicked smile and blood on his hands, literally, Owen looks fantastic here. The show could very well give the actor one of his best roles in years.
The Knick should show a much cruder side of medicine, as doctors and surgeons were developing their own methods to treat patients. Hence, the blood and the queasy tone of the teaser. All we’re saying is this may not be the best show to watch while sitting in a hospital bed.
Soderbergh is directing all 10 episodes, with the pilot coming from the writing team of Jack Amiel and Michael Begler (Big Miracle). Oddly enough, Cinemax does not have a premiere date for the series just yet, although expect a summer start.
