In this new scripted drama from director Steven Soderbergh (who directed all ten episodes), a brilliant surgeon named John Thackery (Oscar® nominee Clive Owen) pushes the boundaries of medicine, morality and race relations in 1900 at a downtown NYC hospital.
The Knick, short for The Knickerbocker Hospital, faces a major upheaval due to an exodus of affluent patrons, an infusion of poor patients, and gross mismanagement of its finances. One of the hospital’s remaining stars is Thackery, who searches to solve a plethora of medical mysteries while developing an unhealthy addiction to cocaine, legal at the time. Thackery is eventually paired against his will with a young doctor, Algernon Edwards (André Holland), whose intelligence and at-all-costs methods rivals Thackery’s, but whose arrival is marked by contempt from fellow doctors and prejudice from patients.
Other characters include Cornelia Robertson (Juliet Rylance), daughter of a shipping tycoon who wields significant influence at The Knick and helped in the hiring of Edwards over Thackery’s protégé́, Dr. Everett Gallinger (Eric Johnson); Dr. “Bertie” Chickering Jr. (Michael Angarano), a young surgeon secretly in love with nurse Lucy Elkins (Eve Hewson), who is drawn to Thackery; Sister Harriet (Cara Seymour), who runs the foundling hospital and maternity ward; Herman Barrow (Jeremy Bobb), the Knick’s crooked superintendent, awash in debt and willing to risk The Knick’s future to pay it off; and Tom Cleary (Chris Sullivan), the ambulance driver, who will stoop to the lowest depths to bring the right kind of patients to The Knick.