[The Nurse Series 2023 Review] Serial killer nurse with schizophrenia is different from The Good Nurse.

The Nurse  The 4-episode original Netflix series is based on the true story of Denmark’s most notorious serial killing case. The story begins in early March 2015 when Danish police received a call from a nurse at Nykøbing Falster Hospital, who suspected that her colleague had killed three patients. There were indications that the colleague had been involved in a series of killings before, targeting multiple victims.

The Nurse Series Review

“This series is based on a different true story from the 2022 Netflix movie The Good Nurse , which is set in America. Although the plot is very similar, the events in this series took place in Denmark. The killer is a female nurse named Christina Aistrup Hansen, who was accused of killing three patients and attempting to kill several others at Nykøbing Falster Hospital using high doses of morphine and diazepam.”

The difference in detail between these two cases is that in “The Good Nurse”, the nurse injected insulin into saline solution causing the patients to mysteriously die, claiming that she wanted to relieve their suffering. However, in this case, the killer used large amounts of morphine and diazepam to induce cardiac arrest, and then performed CPR on the victims, driven by a desire for attention due to their histrionic personality disorder. The story begins with the character Pernille starting her job as a trainee nurse and learning about the nursing life with her friend Kristina. They both became star nurses who saved many patients from frequent cardiac arrests, but it also became the starting point for Pernille’s suspicion that her friend intentionally administered the drugs that caused these events to happen.

The story attempts to point out the problem of this case, which makes everyone wonder why no one questioned the mysterious deaths before. It is similar to The Good Nurse in some ways, where doctors and nurses often do not dare to question or ask about the abnormality of their colleagues. There are many things that appear suspicious but are brushed off during investigations. Even though there have been many mysterious deaths before, the police only received information that it was something that happened. This demonstrates the shortcomings of the verification system in the medical industry. Therefore, the story presents the difficulty of finding evidence to convict the culprit, which the protagonist Pernille has to take the risk of losing her job and being ostracized by her nurse friends. Even after the case was revealed and judged, she still remained in that situation.

As this is a series consisting of 4 episodes, totaling over 3 hours, the story is told in great detail and is not as concise as the movie The Good Nurse, which is only 2 hours long. The first two episodes are quite slow-paced, presenting the life of the protagonist as a nurse and her personal life gradually, with only a few thrilling elements. It is not until the third episode, when the protagonist Perrine decides to investigate the case on her own, that the story becomes more exciting. However, since the story is told from her point of view, it does not delve as deeply into the serial killer’s details as The Good Nurse. The story ends simply with the verdict coming from the final night of the events, without delving into the numerous victims of the Christiana incident, which amounted to several dozen, considering the three years that Perrine spent as a nurse here.

Overall, this series tells the story of a chilling case well, but wastes time on setting up the characters’ work lives in the early parts. It gets more exciting in the second half. Compared to “The Good Nurse,” it’s not as concise, but they’re different cases with differing levels of detail on the killings and motivations. Despite their differences, they share many similarities and are both worth watching, especially for those who enjoy a continuous killer genre.

Including other English reviews