Are The Nurse and The Good Nurse based on the same true crime story?

Netflix’s new Danish thriller series The Nurse is about a nurse later convicted of killing her patients. It is based on a true story, and the plot is similar to that of the Netflix Original film The Good Nurse, starring Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain, released in 2022. Are The Nurse and The Good Nurse adapting the same true crime story?

Spoilers ahead for The Good Nurse and The Nurse

Given that the Danish series and the American film have almost identical plotlines, it is entirely understandable why viewers might believe the two are retelling the same crime in different mediums, but that’s not the case here. Below we’ll detail the differences between the two.

Are The Nurse and The Good Nurse related?

Despite their similar stories, The Nurse and The Good Nurse are about two different true crime cases. The Nurse is about the real former nurse Christina Aistrup Hansen, a Danish woman sentenced to 12 years in prison on four counts of attempted murder.

The Good Nurse is based on the book The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder by Charles Graeber. In the Netflix movie starring Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne, Redmayne plays a version of the real-life serial killer Charles Cullen who confessed to killing 40 patients, 29 of which were confirmed. But like Christina, Charles was a nurse, so it’s easy to see why people might think these two Netflix Originals are related or telling the same story.

Charles is an American serial killer from New Jersey with a 16-year career working in various NJ medical centers. He is currently serving 18 consecutive life sentences in prison. In the movie, Chastain plays a similar role to Pernille in The Nurse. She portrays Amy Loughren, one of Cullen’s colleagues, who eventually became suspicious of him and reported him to the police. Loughren is also a real person who actually did assist in Cullen’s arrest.

Both The Nurse and The Good Nurse are now streaming on Netflix. If you want to learn more about Charles Cullen, Netflix also has a documentary on him titled Capturing the Killer Nurse.