Love The Pitt? The Knick Is Your Next Must-Watch Historical Drama
Steven Soderbergh's two-season series starring Clive Owen still lands with scalpel-sharp force, as urgent and electrifying now as the day it premiered.
You just tore through HBO's The Pitt and want another hospital drama that goes for the jugular? Park yourself on Max and cue up The Knick. It hits the same pressure points—addiction, trauma, surgeons chasing breakthroughs at any cost—and then widens the scope in ways The Pitt intentionally compresses.
Why The Knick stands apart
The Pitt plays out each season over a single ER shift, which keeps the adrenaline high but tightens the character runway. The Knick opens that up. Set in 1900 at New York's Knickerbocker Hospital, it follows the chaos inside the operating theater and the fallout beyond it, over months rather than hours.
Steven Soderbergh directed all 20 episodes himself—every frame of both seasons—while juggling film work. That creative throughline matters; the show looks and moves like one long, surgical fever dream.
The people you’ll live with
- Dr. John W. Thackery (Clive Owen): Genius surgeon, compulsive experimenter, hopelessly hooked on cocaine and opium.
- Dr. Algernon Edwards (Andre Holland): Harvard-trained, rigorously skilled, pushing past a wall of racism while often being the sharpest person in the room.
- Lucy Elkins (Eve Hewson): A new nurse who idolizes Thackery’s brilliance and loathes what his addictions do to him.
- Dr. Bertram 'Bertie' Chickering Jr. (Michael Angarano): Earnest, ambitious, and quietly nursing a chip on his shoulder as he chases the craft.
Brace yourself for the medicine
The Knick does not flinch. Patients arrive only when they are out of options, and the doctors—more pioneers than polished professionals—cut into the unknown with methods that were considered standard at the time and still feel shocking today. It is grisly, historically grounded, and beautifully staged. If you like your period drama with a pulse you can feel in your throat, this is it.
Acclaim was never the problem
Season 1 landed strong with 87% positive reviews, and Season 2 climbed to 97%. Clive Owen even scored a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a TV Drama. So why only two seasons?
Money and reach. Recreating turn-of-the-century New York is expensive. The show aired on Cinemax in 2014–2015, when streaming wasn’t the default and on-demand access meant paying for that specific channel. Big spend, limited audience, minimal return—the math killed it, not the quality.
About that rumored comeback
There have been conversations about a third season, with Barry Jenkins attached to direct at one point. Soderbergh has floated the idea that any continuation would jump to different time periods. As of now, momentum has not turned into movement.
Where to watch
The Knick’s two-season run is streaming on Max. If The Pitt has you buzzing, this is the next stop—and it absolutely earns the detour.