Ratched: Season 1

Ratched can't help but be watchable with a cast this overqualified and design this sumptuous. But it feels like the same old Murphy soap opera we've seen before.

Your mileage may vary on how well it explores that idea and the cheap, convenient plot devices that pad it out into eight episodes, but if it's a spectacle you want, that's what Ratched somewhat delivers in its performances and production design.

A thoughtful, moving examination of the repercussions of trauma, and a reclamation of queerness and femininity from a genre and source material that has treated both with contempt.

Abrupt tonal shifts between terrifying scenarios, dark comedy and troubling treatments in the Lucia State Hospital leave the narrative unmoored from the off.

So... not exactly quiet, restrained entertainment, then. Ratched ratchets up everything, from the deeply colourful design to the Bernard Herrmann-like music to noir-ish soap-opera plotting that drips with sex and violence. But it isn't pure camp.

Paulson does her very best to connect the dots, but her Herculean effort to hold the narrative together with her bare hands cannot mask how little the writers seem to have considered Ratched as a character beyond a uniform and a haircut.

A confusing character study that never quite gets a grip on the character it's studying.

It doesn't feel that new, but Ratched's monsters make their mark.

Tries, for a while, and it looks awfully good doing it. But it gets waylaid in spectacle and lurid melodrama.