Television series

The Knick

Name: The Knick
Genre: Drama, Medical
Released: 2014
Cast: André Holland, Cara Seymour, Clive Owen, Eric Johnson, Juliet Rylance

Medical drama
Very dark

Steven Soderbergh directs and shoots every episode himself, turning early-1900s New York surgery into something closer to horror than history. Clive Owen's cocaine-fuelled Dr. Thackery chases medical glory while the hospital around him rots with racism, poverty and improvisation. It's visceral, clinical, and scored with an anachronistic electronic pulse — gorgeous, upsetting, and unlike any other period drama you've seen.

TVMaze rating

4.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy brilliant, flawed people wrestling with primitive methods, where the operating theatre feels genuinely dangerous and the gritty craft of the work is the point.

Skip it if the surgery is frequently bloody and the mood rarely lifts, so squeamish viewers or anyone wanting lighter company will struggle.

What it asks of you: Roughly an hour per episode across twenty episodes, with a grim, unhurried tone that rewards sustained attention rather than casual half-watching.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Boardwalk Empire2010

Same era, nearly the same city, and the same rot beneath ambition — Nucky Thompson's empire built on the same Gilded Age hunger for progress and profit that drives Thackery's operating theatre.

But Slower burn, more gangster plotting than surgical urgency, and it takes a season to find its rhythm.

Deadwood2004

Another filthy frontier town building its institutions from scratch, led by men whose brilliance and self-destruction are inseparable — the same fascination with civilisation assembled by desperate, flawed hands.

But Shakespearean dialogue can be a wall at first, and there's little of The Knick's visual daring.

The Alienist2018

1890s New York, class and race fault lines, and a haunted genius doctor chasing the unknown — practically a sister show, minus Soderbergh's camera and cocaine.

But Glossier and more procedural, trading The Knick's queasy realism for prestige-drama polish.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Knick

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Citadel1938

Same moral engine decades earlier — a gifted young doctor lured from idealism toward money and status, the exact corruption Thackery risks every episode.

A black-and-white British drama that beat prestige TV to this story by 75 years — a doctor's slow slide from principle to profit, shot with real fury about medical ethics.

But Stagey by modern standards, moralistic in a way The Knick never is, and its melodrama shows its age.

Masters of Sex2013

Ambition, addiction and institutional politics collide in another period drama about scientists breaking taboos while their hospital fights to survive; same appetite for procedure, secrecy and scandal.

But Focus shifts toward relationships more than surgery, and the pace is gentler throughout.

House2004

A brilliant, addicted, insufferable doctor solving impossible cases — Thackery's spiritual descendant, just modernised, procedural, and mostly survivable for the patients involved.

But Network-friendly formula with a case-of-the-week structure, and none of The Knick's grime or dread.

Chernobyl2019

Institutional failure, mortality, and men making impossible calls with primitive tools — same dread, same fascination with process under catastrophe, just swapping scalpels for reactors.

But Miniseries length means less time with characters, and the tone stays bleak with little levity.

ER1994

The blueprint for chaotic hospital ensembles — frantic pacing, moral compromise, doctors burning out in real time; The Knick's great-grandparent, cleaned up for network television.

But Dated by today's standards, and the medicine is far safer — less visceral stakes throughout.

Gangs of New York2002

Scorsese's filthy, brawling vision of the same city a few decades earlier — poverty, ambition and violence colliding in a New York that made the Knickerbocker's world possible.

But More gang war than medicine, and Day-Lewis's Bill the Butcher steals every scene from the plot.

The Wire2002

A different institution but the same clear-eyed portrait of a broken system failing the people inside it — bureaucracy, addiction and idealism ground down by reality, told with total patience.

But No period setting, no surgery — the connection here is structural, not surface-level.

Lenox Hill2020

A real Manhattan hospital, real surgeons under real pressure — the unscripted version of everything The Knick dramatises, minus the cocaine and the score.

Four actual doctors at a real New York hospital, filmed with intimate, unhurried access — proof that the ego, exhaustion and wonder dramatised in The Knick aren't exaggerated.

But Calmer and kinder than fiction allows; nobody's addicted to opium, and nothing gets sawed off on camera.

Hannibal2013

Same obsession with the body as canvas, same visually audacious camera turning surgery-adjacent horror into something like art — brilliance and transgression fused, just pushed into full psychological horror.

A serial-killer procedural shot like a fever dream, obsessed with flesh, ritual and the seductive charisma of brilliant, dangerous men — The Knick's aesthetic ambition taken to its most extreme, beautiful conclusion.

But Far more surreal and horror-inflected, with none of The Knick's grounding in real history or medicine.