If you didn't watch the first season of The Knick, sort that out now because you missed out one of the best TV series in recent years.
Why it's so good, you ask? For one, the cast and director attached are pretty top-drawer. Steven Soderbergh's retired from film and is concentrating solely on television. What did he direct? Ocean's Eleven. Out Of Sight. Side Effects. Magic Mike. Behind The Candelabra. Basically some of the best films of the last twenty years or more.
You've also got Clive Owen playing a drug-addled genius surgeon in turn-of-the-century New York who's battling institutional indifference to advances in medicine and a pretty serious heroin addiction. Eve Hewson, her of the Hewsons of Killiney Hill, also stars as a brilliant young nurse who's fallen under the influence of Clive Owen's drug-addled genius. Did we mention Clive Owen's character is a genius, but has a serious drug problem? That's really important.
As well as fantastic acting, it's got a brilliant script and some seriously grisly sequences depicting just how brutal surgery was in the 1800's.
Get a load of this.
The best way we can describe it is like a TV series of There Will Be Blood. Except there's actual blood, not oil.
We're not just talking about a similar setting, mind. It's got the same level of intensity, beauty, violence, fascination and everything else that made a film like There Will Be Blood an instant classic, which is what The Knick is. An instant classic.
The Knick lands on US screens on October 16th and will be on Sky Atlantic shortly afterwards.
