The Knick: ‘retired’ Soderbergh delivers dark TV drama

Steven Soderbergh has stayed busy since his retirement. The Knick proves this is no bad thing.

The Knick, starring Clive Owen as Dr John Thackery, is set in New York’s Knickerbocker Hospital.

Director Steven Soderbergh’s retirement from filmmaking has been as final as Australian singer John Farnham’s from concert touring (tickets for The Legendary John Farnham 2015 tour available now through usual outlets).

This is no bad thing. Since mentioning retirement after the release of his film Side Effects in 2013, citing lost enthusiasm, the American has released the wonderful HBO telemovie Behind the Candelabra and now the TV series The Knick.

And that’s just as a director, as he moved to Broadway to direct theatre, and executive-produced the sequel to his Magic Mike and a TV series adaptation of his call-girl film The Girlfriend Experience.

The Knick appeared to be an odd tangent, a series made for the Cinemax US cable channel, previously known as a film channel that only really made its own Friday night soft-porn telemovies (including the classic, I’m told, Busty Coeds vs Lusty Cheerleaders).

Cinemax couldn’t miss the quality-cable-drama bus, though, and it has lifted its game more than competently with the recent series Hunted, Banshee and now The Knick.

The Knick (R18+, Roadshow, 487min, $39.95) is as close to a serious HBO drama as could be imagined.

Actually, it’s more like the darkest BBC drama stylistically — and, initially, that might push away some viewers.

The often nihilistic 10-part series follows doctors at Manhattan’s Knickerbocker Hospital in the early 20th century, a time when blood was spilled freely and rough medical experimentation was exercised in the name of progress.

It results in squeamish moments as our drug-fuelled antihero, Dr John Thackery (Clive Owen), slices, delves and manipulates internal organs with a certain brutality.

“It’s been tried once before on a labrador retriever,” Thackery notes of one particularly sensitive job. And the result? “Not a day goes by I don’t miss that dog.”

It is not a comedy, though. This is serious, moral-dilemma drama in which conflicts, crises and contusions happen in the name of science and health.

It has a hint of the previous US series Deadwood with its in-your-face portrayal of another frontier.

It is blithe about death, as they were, and charging towards progress without any semblance of apology. Owen’s manic, charismatic performance is crucial because he plays a bastard who will, ultimately, make things happen.

The series looks gorgeous, as much as it can in a largely interior world that is almost too crisp (although some exterior scenes look fantastic), and the themes it addresses are very contemporary.

It feels real without being nostalgic. Those were uncompromising times. The Knick offers a dramatic world that may not be for the squeamish. Yet is it, on the whole, rather more-ish.

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Twitter: @michaelbodey