A new nurse at a mental institution becomes jaded, bitter and a downright monster, playing patients off against staff.

Ryan (American Horror Story) Murphy’s 8-part series that establishes the origins of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s monstrous nurse – an Oscar-winning performance by Louise Fletcher in the 1975 movie – is great fun on a superficial level, thanks in no small part to the excellent Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story) in the titular role, but it’s a far cry from Milos Forman’s film or Ken Kesey’s novel.

I’d go a far as to say that this Ratched is so unrecognisable that she might as well have been given a new name and identity. We start in 1947 and witness a young man killing four priests. The music is dialled to 11 – it’s Bernard Herrmann Hitchcock style; at times it’s actually Vertigo – and it lives in a heightened state of reality throughout.

The killer is moved to the Lucia State Mental Hospital which looks like an Art Deco hotel; costumes are primary colours, the screen is suddenly thrown into a gory red or screaming green as the camera twists in Dutch angles. There is no subtlety here, it reminds me most of Murphy’s American Horror Story, and it is similarly strangely compelling. Its trashiness draws you back for more – it’s the TV equivalent of rubber necking at a car crash.

In these first three episodes we watch as Ratched forces her way into a job at the Californian hospital where we meet the drug addict head of the institution Dr Hanover (Jon Jon Briones), his fawning but vicious head nurse Betsy Bucket (Judy Davis) and assistant to the state governor Gwendolyn Briggs (Cynthia Nixon), each brimming with secrets and problems for Ratched to exploit.

Verdict: From frontal lobotomies to a wine cellar prison from The Silence of the Lambs movie to drug-fuelled amputations, Ratched is hysterical in every sense and maybe too much of an assault on the senses for some. But if you can stomach it, it’s never boring. 7/10

Nick Joy