I first watched Benedict Cumberbatch in the Sherlock series on PBS and became an instant fan. His characters are usually quite impressive, but in this latest series, Benedict Cumberbatch plays a character who is extremely unlikeable and crude. I could not help myself and binged-watched all six episodes in one evening.
Eric
Eric is a 2024 British psychological thriller series streaming on Netflix. Created and written by Abi Morgan, the six episode series directed by Lucy Forbes stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Gaby Hoffmann, McKinley Belcher, Ivan Morris, Bamar Kane, and Adepero Oduye. The story takes place in New York during the ’80s where Vincent Anderson (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a puppeteer on a famous children’s show called Good Day Sunshine…the show has a Sesame Street type of vibe. But Vincent, who is the center of this children’s show, is anything but happy sunshine. The son of a powerful and rich developer, Vincent is not only alienated from his parents, but he is a lousy husband and father. His wife, Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann) is tired of Vincent’s drinking and drugs and his angry outbursts. She is not only in a relationship with another man, but pregnant. Vincent’s son, Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe) who tries desperately to gain his father’s attention, is often the victim of his father’s brutal verbal eruptions.
One day, after a bitter fight with his wife, Vincent allows his young son to walk to school alone. The child never reaches the school. Vincent soon becomes a suspect, but the police detective, Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher111) suspects that Edgar’s case might be related to another missing child. Detective Michael Ledroit’s investigation leads him to a bigger case involving human trafficking, crooked cops, a mob owned sanitation crew, and the city’s Deputy Mayor (Jeff Hephner) who plans to drive the homeless out of the city in order to build expensive condos.
Conclusion
This series has you hooked from the first episode, and you need to pay attention to all the details because everything is connected, including the other missing boy. Benedict Cumberbatch is at his best, and you know this because you find yourself hating his character. Vincent elicits no mercy or patience from the viewer in the first few episodes. I found myself more into the character of detective Ledroit, who has to hide his private life as he searches diligently for the boys.
Cumberbatch’s Vincent takes a back seat to Belcher’s Ledroit’s investigation…that is until Vincent finds a map that Edgar drew on the custodian’s basement wall…the focus then changes, and we hang on to the edge of our seats as Vincent goes searching for his son in the underground sewers of New York City.
This is a series that you will kick yourself for missing. We have two amazing actors with Cumberbatch and McKinley Belcher, a story about the homeless, dirty cops, greedy developers, missing children and a seven-foot puppet named Eric.
Eric is a heart wrenching story about the underbelly of the city that never sleeps, and it is a story about a father realizing that monsters are sometimes called Dad. Watch it on Netflix.
