Great drama comes in threes this week as America's powerhouse cable network HBO launches two brash new series – The Knick and The Leftovers – and brings back the acclaimed Boardwalk Empire for its swansong.
The Golden Globe and Bafta Award-winner Clive Owen (Closer) wields a mean scalpel and a distinctive moustache in the most compelling of the trio, The Knick, as the brilliant surgeon John Thackery who pushes the boundaries of medicine, morality and race relations in 1900 at The Knickerbocker Hospital in downtown New York City.
With its exodus of rich patients, its flood of poor patients and its grossly mismanaged finances, The Knick is figuratively gasping for a talent transplant and finds a true star in Thackery, who searches to solve a plethora of medical mysteries while developing an unhealthy addiction to cocaine, which was legal at the time.
The Knick is wildly fascinating, too, from a medical-history point of view, to watch Thackery and his young assistant Dr Algernon Edwards (André Holland) operating with their bare hands and superb instincts in an era where the technology simply didn't exist to match their healing aspirations.
Furiously hand-cranked pumps suction blood in the theatre; nurses verbally call out pulse and respiration numbers. The hospital can barely even afford those newfangled electrical light bulbs in the series premiere.
A superb ensemble cast whips up the medical politics as well at a time when the burly drivers of horse-drawn ambulances toted huge wooden clubs to bludgeon the competition to secure more patients for The Knick or fresh bodies for dissection.
It's a visual and dramatic feast. It should come as no surprise that all 10 episodes are directed by the Oscar and Palme d'Or-winner Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Sex, Lies, and Videotape), or that HBO has already renewed it for a second season.
The Leftovers is the first series for its co-creator and showrunner Damon Lindelof since his earlier phenomenon, Lost, finished in 2010. His new story unspools in the fictional suburban town of Mapleton, New York, three years after a fateful day on which 140 million people – two per cent of the world's population – vanished without a trace in a global event dubbed "The Departure".
Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta – who partnered with Lindelof for the series – this disquieting drama focuses on the shattered lives of those left behind.
Seen through the eyes of the beleaguered police chief Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux), the series plumbs how ordinary people react to incomprehensible events – and how the strain of such a calamity can morph people’s faith into cynicism, paranoia, madness or cult-like fanaticism.
“These characters on this show ... are not actively searching for what happened in The Departure,” says Lindelof. “They’re actively searching for what they’re supposed to do in their lives. And, hopefully, that’s what the storytelling is going to echo.”
Will Lindelof leave us dangling as he did with Lost – or eventually explain the mystery?
“I do think that our answer to it is fairly simple, which is, you know, just watch the show.”
Boardwalk Empire jumps ahead seven years to pick up its criminal threads in 1931, two years after the stockmarket crash, as America slides into economic chaos. Of course, for the Atlantic City kingpin Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi), with the survival skills of a cockroach, opportunity comes gift-wrapped in the depths of the Depression.
“It was apparent prohibition was a completely failed experiment and it was coming to an end,” says the series creator and executive producer Terence Winter. “Nucky has an opportunity to finally move his operation into the legitimate world.”
In this fifth and final season, we also flashback to 1884 and the birth of the Boardwalk.
“We explore Nucky’s childhood in Atlantic City. We meet a young Eli. We meet Nucky’s dad. We meet Gillian as a young girl. We meet the young Commodore. We see the events that shaped Nucky’s past – and the events that led to his becoming who he grew up to be.”
“I think this season, Nucky takes a little bit of a look inward,” says Buscemi. One standout character has always been Albert “Chalky” White, the leader of the black community, portrayed with ferocious intensity by Michael K Williams.
“Chalky is very much a changed man,” adds Winter, “but as the season progresses, his storyline with Dr Narcisse comes to a very powerful conclusion.”
The Knick begins tonight at 11pm. Boardwalk Empire is on at 11p tomorrow and The Leftovers is at 12.10am on Tuesday. All are broadcast on OSN First HD
artslife@thenational.ae
