Ratched (TV series)


Ratched is an American psychological thriller television series created by Evan Romansky, developed by Ryan Murphy and starring Sarah Paulson in the title role of Nurse Mildred Ratched. A prequel to Miloš Forman's 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, it depicts the life of Mildred Ratched prior to the events portrayed in the film, albeit in a different state. Ratched received a two-season series order. The first season premiered on Netflix on September 18, 2020. In August 2022, Paulson said she was unsure if the second season was still happening. In February 2024, Ratched was canceled after one season, with Paulson also confirming the fate of the series.

Premise

Cast and characters

Main

Production

Development

On September 6, 2017, it was announced that Netflix had given the production a series order for two seasons. Netflix reportedly won a bidding war over Hulu and Apple who also were interested in developing the project. The series was created by Evan Romansky who also wrote the pilot. His script was eventually received by television producer Ryan Murphy, who then spent a year securing the rights to the Nurse Ratched character and the participation of the Saul Zaentz estate and Michael Douglas, who owned the screen rights to One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Murphy directed the pilot and executive produced alongside Douglas, Aleen Keshishian, Margaret Riley and Jacob Epstein. Production companies involved in the series included Fox 21 Television Studios, The Saul Zaentz Company, and Ryan Murphy Productions. Mac Quayle, who has frequently collaborated with Murphy, composed the series's score.

Casting

Alongside the initial series order announcement, it was confirmed that Sarah Paulson had been cast in the lead role of Nurse Ratched. On December 11, 2018, it was reported that Finn Wittrock and Jon Jon Briones had joined the cast of the series. On January 14, 2019, it was announced that Charlie Carver, Judy Davis, Harriet Harris, Cynthia Nixon, Hunter Parrish, Amanda Plummer, Corey Stoll, and Sharon Stone had been cast in the series. In February 2019, it was reported that Rosanna Arquette, Vincent D'Onofrio, Don Cheadle, Alice Englert, Annie Starke, and Stan Van Winkle had been cast in recurring roles. On July 29, 2020, it was reported that Sophie Okonedo, Liz Femi, and Brandon Flynn were cast in recurring roles.

Filming

Filming took place in early 2019 in Los Angeles and 20th Century Fox Studios. One of the filming locations was the historic Adamson House in Malibu.

Reception

Audience viewership

In its first week of release, Ratched was ranked number one in the Nielsen ratings, who announced that the show had been viewed for a total of 972 million minutes. According to Netflix, the series was viewed by 48 million people in its first four weeks.

Critical response

For the first season, review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes collected 96 critic reviews and identified 61% of them as positive, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's critics consensus states, "Ratched is undeniably stylish, but salacious plot holes and cartoonish characterizations undermine its gorgeous production and committed performances." Metacritic assigned the season a weighted average score of 50 out of 100 based on 32 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
In a 5/5 stars review, Nicholas Barber from BBC Online wrote, "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. Romansky's superb scripts keep tight control of the characters and their intertwining stories, and there are some chillingly accurate depictions of brutal 1940s psychiatric treatment. Ratched is also oddly big-hearted for such a gruesome series. The characters are a crowd of villains, with next to no one who could be classed as heroic, but they are all vulnerable, and most of them are motivated by love – even if that love inspires them to hire a hitman to decapitate an old enemy." The Independents Alexandra Pollard, who rated it 4/5, found the origin story to be "thoughtful and beguiling".
Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly gave the series a C− and described the series' clothes as "nice, but they're dressing a corpse." Reviewing the series for The Hollywood Reporter, Inkoo Kang wrote that, "The performances are across-the-board fantastic, but Nixon—playing Ratched's love interest—exhibits such frailty, sensuality and decency that her turn ultimately ends up feeling like it belongs in a much better production." TVLine wrote that the series "might be emptiest effort yet", giving it a D.

Accolades