Speaking of Cinemax, The Knick is another of their original series and couldn't be more different from Banshee. Starring Clive Owen as Dr John Thackery, a brilliant but tortured surgeon working at the Knickerbocker Hospital in New York City in the year 1900, it is a medical drama with a difference. Acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh was at the helm of every episode of the first season, and he predictably imbued the show with his own uniquely cinematic style. The brilliance of this show is in its setting. At the turn of the century, the world was advancing at an incredible rate, with new discoveries in medicine and technology leading to breakthroughs that would have been impossible even a decade earlier. In many ways these years led to the birth of the modern world, and The Knick wonderfully captures the essence of invention and relentless innovation that Dr Thackery works within. Clive Owen is brilliant, portraying an incredibly forward thinking man in many ways, taking the viewer along with him as 'Thack' experiments with new methods of conducting surgeries but also with cocaine and opium. However, he is also a product of his time in other ways, as he initially refuses to interact with Dr Algernon Edwards (Andre Holland), the other lead of the show, a black doctor who has to battle for respect in the all-white hospital and in the racially segregated city as a whole.
