Two topics that are perennially popular on the small screen are medical dramas and true crime stories. If you’re a fan of both, you owe it to yourself to check out the new movie The Good Nurse, which is now streaming exclusively on Netflix.
Oscar winner Jessica Chastain (she won for 2021’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye) stars as hard-working, put-upon nurse Amy Loughren, who is struggling to balance her duties as a single mother with her job at New Jersey’s Parkfield Memorial Hospital. A tough life becomes infinitely harder when she is diagnosed with a potentially terminal heart condition. Amy’s at the end of her tether, but luckily kindly veteran nurse Charles Cullen (Eddie Redmayne, also an Oscar winner for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything) is on hand to help pick up the slack.
However, when a patient dies of an insulin overdose, evidence points to similar incidents at other hospitals where Charles has worked. Is good-natured Charlie an Angel of Death serial killer? Well, we did say it was a true crime story…
Indeed, the real Charles Cullen was caught in 2003 and sentenced to 18 consecutive life sentences for 29 murders, with hundreds more suspected but unconfirmed, making him one of the most prolific serial killers ever apprehended.
That also makes him perfect grist for a taut procedural thriller, and this one comes to us courtesy of Danish director Tobias Lindholme, who not only directed 2015’s A War, starring Pilou Asbæk, but collaborated with Thomas Vinterberg on the excellent The Hunt (2012) and Another Round (2020), starring Mads Mikkelsen.
That chilly Nordic Noir touch is just what the doctor ordered for The Good Nurse, so if it sounds like the right prescription for you, your next favourite thriller is just a click away.
