thomas4cinema

Steven Soderbergh, Clive Owen… there is no need to add anything once those two names have been pronounced inside one sentence. But of course in the case of “The Knick”, it gets even better, because I happen to enjoy stories of medical challenge, progress and failure. Need to check out “Dead Ringers” again… No, strangely enough, independent of The Knick, I was recently engrossed in (and sometimes grossed out by) the oeuvre  of that New Yorker surgeon column writer, a Mr Gawande, who greatly reflects about the challenges and borders of modern medicine and surgery. On the spot to illustrate this a bit with the history of surgery, as in the case of Dr Thackerey of the Knickerbocker hospital in New York around the 1900s. Even though sometimes it has a bit too much Upstairs Downstairs (or Downton Abbey, as you would call it today), and an abundance of love interests some of which we could do without, the depiction of this driven surgeon who is always on the quest for better solutions, who is driven by scientific urge as much as by vanity, and who is powered by the ever-burning fuel of cocaine and opium. … that is fascinating and splendid television.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the-knick/s01/