Casting News: Cinemax’s The Knick

Four actors have been recently cast in the Clive Owen starring Cinemax series The Knick. Andre Holland, Juliet Rylance, Eve Hewson, and Michael Angarano are set to co-star in the series, which will be directed by Oscar winner Steven Soderbergh. The ten-part series, written by Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, will be set in downtown New York in 1900 and will focus on the Kickerbocker Hospital and the groundbreaking hospital staff working in this challenging period of medical science. So...old-timey ER? Here are the character breakdowns:
 

• Algernon (Holland): A gifted, black Harvard-trained surgeon who fights for respect in the hospital while trying to navigate his way through racially charged turn-of-the-century NYC.
• Cornelia (Rylance): A driving force whose passionate social work at The Knick will always play second fiddle to her wealthy father’s philanthropy.
• Lucy (Hewson): A young, naive nurse from the South who, like tens-of-thousands of others, has come to New York for adventure and finds more of it than she ever thought she would.
• Dr. Bertram “Bertie” Chickering Jr. (Angarano): An eager surgeon-in-training who gives up the chance to practice uptown in a wealthy hospital, for the romance and excitement of learning from a groundbreaking surgeon in the chaotic, downtown world of The Knick.

Production is set to begin this fall. The project certainly has talented and well-respected people at its helm, and with Soderbergh’s vision could become something other than the average medical show or Downton Abbey rip-off. What do you think?