The-Knick-season-2“The Knick” (Cinemax, 10 p.m.) begins with a kind of a test: If you can make it through the first 10 minutes of an early, 1900 C-section with all of its bloody and faulty, foot-pedaled equipment, you’re ready for the rest of the series, which, as it turns out is pretty good.

The period details are plentiful and enjoyable in “The Kinick,” so named after the Knickerbocker Hospital in New York, said to be one of the world’s most innovative at the time. Its artistic design rivals that of “Boardwalk Empire.” Yet its story, of a brilliant but flawed doctor who others want to learn from is straight out of “House.” More than that, it has the same kind of hospital concerns that come up in modern TV dramas, particularly with preening doctors, insecure nurses who come into their own and particularly hospital administrators who are always harping about cutting costs.

Good thing that Clive Owen is so strong as Dr. John W. Thackery, whose main vice has been shooting cocaine, which at the time wasn’t even illegal. Better yet that the series, written by Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, is entirely directed by Steven Soderbergh.

Having recently sworn off movies, Soderbergh is clearly having fun capturing the low lights, lengthy shots and unusual angles of the series (everyone seems to be shot from below). Whatever the drama, which immediately concerns the entry of a new doctor who is highly recommended and African-American (Andre Holland), Soderbergh and Owen deliver on a compelling and largely entertaining series. If you can get past the bloodletting.

It’s certainly the best original drama that’s ever come to Cinemax and further clutters up a summer full of worthy dramas to watch.

The story itself, Begler says, is not about the actual Knickerbocker Hospital, which used to exist uptown in New York City at the turn of the century.

“This is a fictional hospital that we created, and the surgeries that you see, almost all of them are based on actual surgeries, actual procedures that we did extensive research on and worked with Dr. Stanley Burns, who is an archivist who is incredibly helpful,” Begler told reporters at the TV Critics Association summer press tour last month. So, too, is “the race element and the hiring of African Americans — that’s all based in fact and true.”

Amiel said they spent five months researching the era first, “because we wanted to immerse ourselves, and we wanted to become experts in this era so that we understood what was possible, what was real, what was not. Because if something has a kernel of truth, it automatically gains greater credence with us as writers, but I think also with the audience, so we’ve been pretty careful to make sure that we’ve followed the guidelines of history pretty closely.”

“It was clear that these guys had done a phenomenal amount of research and knew an awful lot about that period,” Owen said. “The ideas that they were throwing out, of where to take the thing, were hugely exciting. And there was never a question after reading that first script. I was never not going to do it.”

This, after, “I wasn’t sure I wanted to commit to ten hours of television playing the same part.”

Directing all 10 episodes of the first season — and the 10 of the second season, which was just announced, is something Soderberg says works both economically and visually. “There’s a positive aspect to having a visual language that is very, very specific and very, very unified throughout the show,” he said.

Modern equipment has also made it easier to replicate the low light levels of that era. “The sets were all designed to be lit practically by the kinds of instruments that existed during that period, and the good news is that cameras are now sensitive enough to shoot in literally any circumstance that you can see. And I wanted the show to be dark enough for you to understand what it was like to walk around during that period.”