Evan Romansky
Netflix
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鈥淪HE likes a rigged game,鈥� says Randle McMurphy, the belligerent anti-hero of the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo鈥檚 Nest. McMurphy is talking about his nemesis, Nurse Ratched, the sadistic overseer of a psychiatric hospital ward 鈥� and one of fiction鈥檚 most terrifying villains.
Netflix鈥檚 new TV series Ratched is a prequel to that iconic 1975 film, which was based on a 1960s novel by Ken Kesey. It promises to delve into the eponymous nurse鈥檚 psyche to explore the origins of her behaviour. It kicks off in 1947, when Mildred Ratched (played by Sarah Paulson) seeks work at Lucia State Hospital, a psychiatric facility in California, where unsettling research is taking place.
After fooling hospital director Richard Hanover (Jon Jon Briones) into believing she is the perfect nurse, Ratched carries out a secret plan to help a patient escape that unleashes her darkest tendencies and wreaks havoc at the facility.
Lucia鈥檚 spa-like opulence and the stylish feel of the series seem a world away from the austerity of the ward in Cuckoo鈥檚 Nest. Yet the seeds of that facility and Ratched鈥檚 authoritarian inclinations are already on chilling display. Just as she shames her charges into submission in the film, Paulson鈥檚 Ratched quickly identifies and exploits the weaknesses of those in her way.
Ratched is at its most enjoyable when it replicates the chase scenes and tense confrontations of old-school thrillers. It is also riveting as it confronts 1960s anxieties about women being as cruel and violent as men.
鈥淭he show is riveting as it confronts 1960s anxieties about women being as cruel and violent as men鈥�
There are other women who are violent, but here Ratched gets her hands dirty in a way you don鈥檛 see in the film. By the end of the second episode, for example, she has lobotomised someone.
Stripped of the misogyny now clear in the book and film, the TV series provides an unlikely setting in which to explore relationships between women, from rivalries to romances, but it works well.
The primary relationship is a romantic one between Ratched and Gwendolyn Briggs (Cynthia Nixon), an adviser to the governor. And there is the rivalry-friendship between Ratched and Nurse Bucket (Judy Davis), who Ratched initially tries to usurp.
But it is a shame that a show serving one marginalised group well doesn鈥檛 do the same for another. The people under Ratched鈥檚 care end up feeling like stereotypes because the show doesn鈥檛 spend enough time developing them as rounded characters 鈥� or it uses them as pawns in the machinations of the hospital staff.
Meanwhile, hospital director Hanover lobotomises patients with abandon as he stumbles towards psychiatric 鈥減rogress鈥� and a nurse locks women in baths at extreme temperatures to 鈥渃ure鈥� them of lesbianism. These 鈥�treatments鈥� were of their time, and the series rightly recognises them as monstrous, but the dehumanising handling of those subjected to them leaves that interest looking voyeuristic and providing cheap shock value.
So, too, does its portrayal of patient Charlotte Wells (Sophie Okonedo), where the show peddles stereotypes about people with certain mental health conditions being violent. As such, we have to ask who is served by a chic show seeking to humanise an abusive nurse in a world where the mistreatment of those who use mental health services is still rampant.
A 2019 review of research in found that while coercive measures used in psychiatric settings can cause harm and even death, their incidence is under-researched. And between 2012 and 2017, at least died as a result of failings in their care.
In such a climate, when a show perpetuates obvious and harmful stereotypes about mental health, it is hard to applaud its vision, no matter how stylish and compelling a thriller it is.
