TV Pick of the Week: Sky Atlantic’s ‘The Knick’
Period pieces are particularly en vogue at the moment, and they make for rich, compelling dramas. But you’ll notice that Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire are heading towards their final moments, and Downton, even though it’s doing quite well, has turned into a slightly soggy affair. You might even think, if you were a freelance journalist looking to scrape a feature together, we’ve reached ‘peak period drama’.
Well sorry, but we haven’t, although nice try. We’ll never tire of period pieces because there are simply too many periods to draw sources of inspiration from, and The Knick, which starts tonight [Thursday] on Sky Atlantic, is the next one you need to watch.
The Knick takes place in 1900’s Manhattan, all drab and dreary, with dead horses and relentless smog littering the streets. Clive Owen plays the show’s tortured genius, Dr Nick Thackery, a surgeon thrown into a new position of power, and the show uses the Knickerbocker Hospital to explore a story about human survival in a world where we were more fragile and in more danger than ever.
It’s a bit like how in Game of Thrones a character can die from an infected wound, and suddenly the whole world seems a more dangerous place because of it. Of course, that show also has dragons, weird ice-zombies and unstable monarchs fond of beheading. In The Knick, the real killer is Manhattan itself; a metropolis created by humans that is becoming unstable, hostile, and all-consuming as a result.
Thackery is a skilled surgeon, but The Knick’s setting provides room for scope and complex storylines that other shows (Grey’s Anatomy, House, Scrubs, all the rest) simply can’t achieve.
Manhattan in the 1900s – and the state of ‘modern’ medicine – is in total disarray. Surgery involves literally scabbing your scalpel in the dark; blood is siphoned from a haemorrhaging patient using a hand-wound pump, and guesswork is all the rage. It has to be, because, as we soon learn, even the experts don’t know an awful lot, and what they do know has a habit of going spectacularly wrong.
As a result, Dr Thackery’s genius lies not with extensive medical knowledge or a pleasing bedside manner but with his ability to mix wild approximation, guesswork and a hearty shot of luck.
It’s compelling stuff, and elsewhere outside the operating theatre we get a vivid sense of 1900s New York. New surgeon Algernon Edwards (Andre Holland) is shunned by the staff for being black, despite his unprecedented talent and wealth of experience. Ambulance drivers work on a heavy commission, beating up rivals in the street, and cocaine’s still legal – handy, as it makes a rather effective painkiller.
Episode one features two surgeries and they’re both tense, exhilarating, toe-curling scenes, capturing the sheer terror of exploring the human body. It’s ugly and beautiful, intricate but also sloppy. What’s made explicit is the need to push boundaries and risk people’s lives in order to stand a hope of saving them, and that’s a pretty grim concept.
Luckily, progress is on the way. Episode one sees a surprising moment of clarity in the form of one of Thackery’s homemade tools, while technicians complete some complex wiring and flood the hospital corridors with electricity for the first time. Lamps burst into life and The Knick gets one step closer to aligning with the modern world.
Everything from Manhattan’s slightly smeared, pock-marked aesthetic to the surprisingly modern, Drive-esque score by Cliff Martinez – a buzzy, thumpy affair as far removed from the 1900s as possible – mark The Knick out as a show that’s going to be a big part of your life this autumn.
A second season has already been confirmed, Clive Owen is masterful and the surgery is so gruesome you’ll feel super-indebted to the beloved drugs available on the NHS.
The Knick begins tonight (October 16) at 9pm on Sky Atlantic. Follow Chris Mandle on Twitter @chris_mandle