Most critics like The Knick, and nearly all of them, whether they like it or not, begin with how it looks. Soderbergh’s direction is the point of agreement: the long takes, the play of light and shadow, the period sets and costumes, and the surgeries, which several reviews describe as gruesome enough to warn the squeamish away. Clive Owen’s drug-addicted surgeon draws steady praise, and Collider picks out Andre Holland’s Dr Edwards as the more layered of the two.
The reservations gather around the writing. Variety argues that the bloody procedures stop telling us anything new once they have been repeated, and The Times finds Thackery a brilliant, brutal addict on a road to redemption we have travelled before. The Guardian, broadly warm, still finds it slow. The spread is wide: five clear recommendations against two dismissals, with the dissenters objecting to the story rather than the style.