The Bloody Business of Soderbergh's The Knick

The dog days of August are seeing some interesting new shows test the waters, none of which are likely to be more fascinating than The Knick, from producer Steven Soderbergh, who directs the excellent pilot episode. The Knick is shorthand for 1900 New York's Knickerbocker Hospital, where surgeons such as Clive Owen's Dr. John Thackery are trying to make advances in medicine, despite their reliance on the primitive tools of the era. "More has been learned about the treatment of the human body in the last five years than in the last five hundred."

Obsessed with saving lives, Thackery is also struggling against The Knick's wealthy benefactors who administer the hospital and his own addiction to cocaine, as well as the inexorable grasp of the grim reaper. Like a bloodied Sherlock Holmes, Thackery promises to be a fascinating, flawed character.

The sense of time and place evoking turn of the century New York is outstanding. In a city swelling with immigrants and corruption, the dawn of a new age is upon them, but the prejudices and limitations of the past loom just as large. Performing a Cesarean section is a procedure as daunting as landing on the moon. The surgeries depicted in The Knick are shockingly immediate and out-gruesome The Strain in terms of showing the pliability of human tissue. Soderbergh shoots these without music in near silence, save for a faint background drip, drip, drip echoing in the operating theater.

The cast of largely unknown actors adds to the realism and Soderbergh's use of an initially anachronistic electronic score works surprisingly well at capturing Thackery's outlier perspective.

If you don't have Cinemax, the pilot is available on Comcast in a free "Premiere Preview" section. The Knick has already been renewed for a second season, which bodes well for keeping us awake during surgery. Definitely check it out.