Tag: Nurse Ratched

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Third Day (Sept. 14, 9 p.m., HBO)

This miniseries was co-created by Felix Barrett, founder of Punchdrunk, the theatre company that gave the world the groundbreaking immersive play “Sleep No More,” and there is indeed a touch of the immersive about it.

There’s a hallucinatory quality to what’s onscreen that sometimes makes you feel like you’re losing your grip on reality right along with Sam, played by Jude Law, the married father and small business owner who effectively gets trapped on a very strange island off the British coast.

The other creator is Dennis Kelly, known in the U.K. as the man behind the ultra-violent thriller “Utopia,” with which “The Third Day” shares a use of super-saturated colour, which helps to heighten the sense of unreality.

I’ve seen five of the six episodes — the first three starring Law, the latter starring Naomie Harris (“Moonlight”) — but there’s also a live broadcast to come in between the two parts, described as “an immersive, experiential event,” which obviously nobody has seen yet.

I can tell you that what I have seen is permeated with an unrelenting sense of dread.

Sam ends up on tiny Osea Island when he encounters a troubled young woman from there and drives her home, but circumstances conspire to keep him on the island, not least the fact that the causeway linking it to the mainland is accessible only when the tide is out.

Despite the smiling hospitality of people like the Martins (Paddy Considine and Emily Watson), who run the local pub, there’s a clear sense that Osea is no place for outsiders. Sam catches glimpses of pagan-seeming rituals; there are disembowelled animals strewn about and menacing men in fish-head masks. The longer he stays, the greater the impression that he’s in danger and, also, that there’s no one he can trust. Even his seeming ally, a fellow visitor named Jess (Katherine Waterston), appears to be hiding things.

When Helen (Harris) arrives with her two daughters months after the events involving Sam, there’s not even a pretence of a welcome. The islanders want her gone, but she stubbornly refuses to leave, saying she planned the trip as a birthday surprise for her oldest daughter — although it becomes clear she has an ulterior motive for being there.

The series gets into some quasi-religious mythology that’s a little farfetched, but it works well when it plays up the terror of being stuck in a strange place with no way home.

Ratched (Sept. 18, Netflix)

Ryan Murphy’s latest project for Netflix, co-created with Evan Romansky, is the origin story of literary and cinema villain Nurse Ratched of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” I’m not convinced anyone was clamouring for a look at how the cruel, manipulative character from the 1962 novel and 1975 film became who she was, but here we are.

Don’t look to “Ratched” for nuanced psychological drama; it’s pure melodrama. And like “Hollywood,” the Murphy co-creation that debuted on Netflix in May, it’s more style than substance.

It’s definitely lovely to look at. Mildred Ratched, played by Murphy favourite Sarah Paulson, dresses in colourful period fashions when she’s not in her turquoise nurse’s uniform. And the mental hospital where she connives her way into a job looks more like an elegant hotel than an asylum.

This Nurse Ratched is a rigidly self-controlled, sexually repressed manipulator with a dark past who has a very specific reason for putting herself in the employ of Dr. Hanover (Jon Jon Briones), which I won’t reveal because it would be a spoiler. But she’s not wholly unsympathetic.

The series opens with a gruesome multiple murder by a man (“American Horror Story” alum Finn Wittrock) who comes into Hanover’s and Ratched’s care, and some of the mental hospital’s treatments are barbaric.

Judy Davis co-stars as Ratched’s nemesis, head nurse Betsy Bucket. Vincent D’Onofrio plays the state governor, who uses the mental hospital as a prop for his re-election campaign, and Cynthia Nixon is his assistant, a closeted lesbian.

Sharon Stone also chews some scenery as a very rich woman with a grudge against Dr. Hanover.

Odds and Ends

If you’re a fan of Luca Guadagnino’s previous work, especially the Oscar-nominated gay love story “Call Me By Your Name,” then you will likely take to “We Are Who We Are” (Sept. 14, 10 p.m., HBO), a series he co-created and directed about two teenagers exploring their sexual and gender identities on an American air force base in Italy. It stars Jack Dylan Grazer as Fraser, a New York teen who grudgingly comes to Italy with his mother Sarah (Chloe Sevigny), the new commander of the base, and her wife Maggie (Alice Braga). Kid Cudi also co-stars as one of the soldiers under Sarah’s command and the father of Caitlin (Jordan Kristine Seamon), with whom Fraser forms a close friendship.

This week offers three pandemic-tailored awards shows. First up are the TIFF Tribute Awards (Sept. 15, 8 p.m., CTV), which will honour Kate Winslet and Sir Anthony Hopkins among others, with the stars checking in virtually. Next are the Academy of Country Music Awards (Sept. 16, 8 p.m., Global, CBS), hosted by Keith Urban and broadcast live from three venues in Nashville with a live performance by Taylor Swift. Finally, the Primetime Emmy Awards go virtual (Sept. 20, 8 p.m., CTV, ABC) with Jimmy Kimmel hosting from Los Angeles and the rest of the stars appearing via video call-in.

For those of you who love British TV and the work of Sally Wainwright in particular (“Happy Valley,” “Gentleman Jack”), the dramedy “Last Tango in Halifax” is back for a fourth season (Sept. 20, 8 p.m., PBS). Senior citizens Alan (Derek Jacobi) and Celia (Ann Reid) have been married seven years when the series resumes, but there are frictions to be overcome. Sarah Lancashire (“Happy Valley”) and Nicola Walker (“Unforgotten”) resume their roles as Celia’s and Alan’s adult daughters.

BritBox has a new show debuting, “Don’t Forget the Driver” (Sept. 15), which was co-created by and stars prolific actor Toby Jones as a put-upon single father who makes a living driving day-trippers on coach excursions from the seaside town of Bognor Regis in England. The series is gently comedic but also deals with deadly serious issues, specifically the worldwide refugee crisis.