Ivan Radford | On 02, Jun 2024

“The real monsters ain’t under the bed,” says Eric to Vincent (Benedict Cumberbatch) partway through Eric. The fact that Eric is a 7ft blue, furry beast and exists solely within Vincent’s head is just the starting point for Netflix’s dark, strange drama.

Vincent is a puppeteering icon – revered to a Jim Henson-like degree – who created the Sesame St-esque series Good Day Sunshine. When his young son, Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe), goes missing on the way to school, Vincent spirals into a well of despair and desperation. Somehow, he’s convinced, if he can turn Edgar’s scribbled ideas of a puppet – called Eric – into a real creation, then Edgar might come home. The fact that Vincent partly deals with this trauma through his work is par for the course for someone so narcissistic – he’s a toxic troubled artist who is already high on his own genius before he sinks into substance abuse. As he becomes estranged from coworkers and even further alienated from his wife, Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann), he starts to investigate Eric’s disappearance for himself – and finds himself accompanied by a walking, talking Eric in the process.

It’s a compelling premise for a series and Benedict Cumberbatch is sensational in the lead, sinking his teeth into Vincent’s flaws and muddled attempts to find redemption. Not since Patrick Melrose has Cumberbatch had such a meaty – and weird – role to immerse himself in, and it’s the kind of material that perfectly matches his talents, as he seethes with nasty, preening arrogance, boils with guilt and regret, and simmers with resentment at his privileged, wealthy parents.

But writer Abi Morgan (The Split, Shame) is interested in more than just one man’s crumbling psychological state – and what begins as a companion piece to the Jim Carrey series Kidding grows into a wider tale of corruption and justice in 1980s New York. The other key driver of the plot is NYPD detective Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III), a Black gay man with a terminally ill partner who keeps his private life strictly private – the fact that he’s the one honest cop in his department only makes the tightrope he walks daily all the riskier.

As Edgar’s disappearance gets media coverage, Ledroit is reminded of the lack of attention given to another boy –
Marlon Rochelle – who went missing a year ago and whose mother, Cecile (Adepero Oduye), is still fighting for answers. Linking the two boys, despite their very different backgrounds, might be the nightclub Lux, known by Ledroit and populated by dodgy local officials and even dodgier police officers. But there’s also the janitor in Vincent’s building, played by Clarke Peters, who has a suspicious past record. And, lurking in the background, is Vincent’s real estate tycoon dad, connected to everyone and everything. And why did Vincent let Edgar walk to school on his own anyway?

All these strands overlap, entangle and unwind over six sprawling episodes. The more it continues and the wider its focus gets, the more it threatens to unravel – and the less Edgar’s own disappearance feels like the crucial plot point, or even mystery, that it should be. But it doesn’t lose its emotional significance, thanks to Cumberbatch and a superb Gaby Hoffmann, who quietly adds layers of frustration, pain, longing and hope to Cassie, giving her more depth and agency than she might appear to have on the page. The remarkable McKinley Belcher III, meanwhile, almost steals every scene going as the stoic Ledroit, who we can feel hiding his feelings underneath a carefully composed, and necessary, mask – it’s a masterclass in restraint and brings a complexity to proceedings that poignantly contrasts with Vincent’s more publicly tormented figure.

Director Lucy Forbes (This Is Going to Hurt, The End of the F***ing World) leans into the weirdness wonderfully, as Eric becomes a tangible, larger-than-life presence in an increasingly shady and ominous landscape. The result is an ambitious and distinctive journey through the shadowy back passages of one man’s fragmented mind and the city around him – and a thoughtful excavation, and acceptance, of all the monsters that lurk in both.

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