Netflix has released a trailer for Ratched, its upcoming origin story based on the character of Nurse Mildred Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It will premiere on the streaming service on September 18th.
Over two seasons and 18 episodes, the series (which begins in 1947, 16 years before the events of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) follows Mildred Ratched as she arrives in Northern California to begin working at a psychiatric hospital where new and unsettling experiments have begun on the human mind. But Mildred is actually on her own secret mission to infiltrate the mental health care system, and soon her perfect nurse image begins to slip, exposing the darkness within her and “revealing that true monsters are made, not born.”
Serial killers seem to be fast becoming the new zombie for entertainment fans. As well as having Dexter, Bates Motel, and Hannibal we now have the return of a character that was thoughtful enough to give musical advice while murdering his victims. Yes Patrick Bateman may be making a return in a televised series of American Psycho. Planned for FX, it has Allison Shearmur (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) producing and Stefan Jaworski (Those Who Kill) behind it as writer.
For people unaware of Mr. Bateman (and who have been living under a rock since 1991) he is a yuppie executive who in his spare time murders his colleagues and any one he becomes annoyed with. The book American Psycho, where Patrick is first unleashed into the world (he does appear in a very brief scene in The Rules of Attraction novel), came from the brilliant mind of Bret Easton Ellis, and was turned into a movie starring former Batman, Christina Bale, who gives a stunningly mental performance.
It seems in this updated version (which follows on from the movies and novel), Bateman is now in his 50s and has taken on a protegé to help him in a sick social experiment which will hopefully create a new generation of psychos just like him. Sounds promising and if this is crafted as well as the Hannibal series, it should be superb. A big part of what makes Hannibal great is knowing who the killer is and watching him twist the cast around his fingers. We would guess that American Psycho is probably going to take this route as well. It would be difficult to mold him as the likable psycho like we’ve seen in Dexter, because he really is a bit of an unlikable chap. In the movie, though everyone he meets loves him until the moment he snaps in front of them. If it involves a protégé then his manipulation of people Patrick has will definitely come into play.
No casting news as of yet but the serial killer role is going to be a tough one to fill. TV psychos tend to be more charming and sophisticated with just a hint of menace behind their eyes. It is unlikely that Christian Bale is going to reprise his role as Patrick so the casting of this role is going to be crucial in the audience accepting this new series and character.
The only downside is that first impressions of the book and the movie were you did not actually know if Patrick was a killer or not. The scenes of murder that we see him witness are all discredited by the end and certainly make you wonder if it is all in his head. The ambiguous nature of this ending really appealed to me. However, the existence of a series with a protégé seems to confirm it will not be in his head, unless it is later revealed to all be imagined. That is the great thing about entertainment though, how differently each person interprets the material in front of them. TV interpretations of popular characters from books and film have been incredible as of late and very well scripted pieces. Here is hoping American Psycho can do the same as the many shows before it. If it can it should make for some fantastic television.
NBC has finally announced the fate of their gourmand drama Hannibal and it is a favorable one. Despite low numbers, NBC has decided to take a chance on Bryan Fuller’s story about the legendary cannibal.
We’re so proud of Bryan’s vision for a show that is richly textured, psychologically complex, and very compelling, there are many great stories still to be told. — Jennifer Salke, NBC Entertainment President, via EW
Now I know I already bashed the entire show and concept of NBC’s Hannibal pretty badly last time, but it’d seem that things about it keep looking better and better the more I hear about it. The brilliant casting of Macklemore Mads Mikkelson as Dr. Lecter is great as I previously mentioned, but now the big news is about Gillian Anderson returning to TV after several years of being off the small screen. Gillian Anderson as you’ll no doubt remember, played FBI skeptic Agent Dana Scully on The X-Files. Now she’ll be coming back to TV for multiple episodes in the show, playing Dr. Lecter’s own therapist.
Gillian Anderson
[quote] In a multi-episode arc on the upcoming NBC drama, Anderson is going to play Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier — murderous psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s (Mads Mikkelsen) own therapist.
“Every therapist needs their own head examined and we are ecstatic that Gillian Anderson has chosen Hannibal to mark her return to American television after 10 years to portray Dr. Lecter’s personal psychiatrist,” Fuller said in a statement. “Her intelligence and sophistication, not to mention her pedigree of ground-breaking TV, make her the perfect actress to match wits and psychological manipulations with one of the greatest villains of pop culture. I couldn’t be more excited.” [/quote]
Whoa whoa whoa, HOLD UP. That’s all find and dandy, yay X-Files whatever. The REAL news in that quote is the statement made by “Fuller” about the show. Which Fuller could that be? Well it’s Bryan Fuller, a name you may not recognize, but whose work you definitely will. He’s only the guy who made Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, the underrated Wonderfalls, and helped write the best parts of the first season of Heroes, aka the only good season actually worth watching.
Here he is pictured with a fox for some reason.
His pedigree alone has me interested in the show, even though it’s so drastically different from all of this other work in tone. Needless to say, the cast and creative team behind this show are certainly looking to be a home run, so maybe it’ll actually be really good? All I can say is that it’ll probably get canceled. Just like all of Bryan Fuller’s other shows.
In other casting news, Canadian comedy fans might recognize another name – The Kids in the Hall star Scott Thompson. Thompson will play Jimmy Price, the third member of the FBI crime scene investigation team headed by Laurence Fishburne’s Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI’s behavioral science unit.
Quick! What’s the weirdest, stupidest, most nonsensical idea for a network television drama you can think of? Is it a story about sub-trans-dimensional mice cross breeding with a race of intergalactic spiders in a horrifying plot to steal all of Earth’s cheese? No? Ok. Was it a watered down TV version of the infamously non-TV appropriate cannibal/murderer/insane character Hannibal Lector? Then BOY HAVE I GOT GREAT NEWS FOR YOU!
So let’s pretend for a minute that the idea isn’t inherently flawed, and instead focus on what could be good about this. Firstly, Mads Mikkelson as Hannibal Lector is pretty excellent casting, and anybody who’s seen the Pusher movies or Valhalla Rising knows the guy has the chops to pull off the role. The problem with that is it’ll inevitably create a terrible vacuum as he’ll be the only good thing about the show, and almost everything else will be awful. I mean, I don’t expect Laurence Fishburne to stay on the cast for long. If there was ever a character who reeked of “Shocking Surprise Death!” it’s him. The whole show seems like a doomed idea, because Hannibal just doesn’t seem suited for any sort of long form serialized medium, and especially the medium of network television. Will he suddenly just NOT be a cannibal? Or will they skirt around it with implications and whatnot? Furthermore, the whole thing looks like somebody saw Silence Of The Lambs, Red Dragon, Manhunter and Hannibal and said “MAKE IT A SHOW DAMMIT!”
Pictured: Macklemore.
On top of that I have a weird personal problem where I keep getting Mads Mikkelson mixed up with recent hip hop artist Macklemore. Well, not literally. I just got really drunk once and couldn’t say “Mads Mikkelson”, and kept slurring his name until “Macklemore” came out, and eventually I started insisting that Macklemore was actually an actor and was really good in Casino Royale. It annoyed everyone.
Grizzly Bomb 