Eric Series Review: One of the highlights of the powerful streaming platform's 2024 television offer arrives on Thursday 30 May exclusively on Netflix. A miniseries in just six episodes led by a great Benedict Cumberbatch, a desperate father looking for a little son who mysteriously disappeared in Eric, created and written by the British showrunner and screenwriter Abi Morgan, who in reality had already worked on non-fiction films for the big screen. of little importance: The Iron Lady, Brick Lane, Suffragette, and Steve McQueen's extraordinary Shame. The Netflix miniseries is a spiral of paranoia, anguish, doubts, and violence that immediately hooks the viewer from its first minutes, not even giving him time to breathe.
In our review of Eric, we will focus on these two fundamental assets for Abi Morgan's television product, capable of recounting (not without some flaws) the distortions and perversions of the family of the new millennium, amidst concerns about the parental role within the home and the growth and development of children in the delicate adolescent phase. Between drama and compelling, albeit distressing, a thriller is more suited to an adult audience.
Edgar's mysterious disappearance
New York 1986. Edgar, a nine-year-old boy, disappears without a trace, throwing his parents into panic. The father, Vincent (Benedict Cumberbatch) is the creator of a hugely successful children's program in which the protagonists are puppets manipulated by Vincent and his colleagues. Edgar's mother, Cassie (Gaby Hoffman) has constant arguments with her husband, who is a problematic man, to say the least. Edgar's research is led by Detective Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III), who himself is experiencing a very difficult personal situation. But Vincent's problems begin after the sudden disappearance of his son, which leads him increasingly towards the abyss of paranoia and alcoholism, with particularly dramatic, unexpected, and... dreamlike consequences.
This is the premise of Eric, an exciting Netflix miniseries arriving in the television catalog of the very popular streaming platform starting May 30th. From an original script and idea by Abi Morgan, a television story is born that manages to combine the tones and language of the classic thriller with those linked to issues of great cultural and social urgency: first of all, parenting in modern Western society and the fundamental role of the parent himself in the relationship he builds with his children. All seasoned with a healthy ability to engage the curiosity of the viewer (even the most casual), immersing him in a dark, chiaroscuro, and at times psychological story of excellent workmanship.
In the belly of New York
Eric by Abi Morgan is a series with multiple anime within it. Souls that emerge from the painful and painful words of his characters in flesh and blood, but which at the same time frame a panorama that surrounds them of equally artistic and narrative importance: the city of New York in the 1980s. A metropolis undergoing dizzying changes, racing madly towards technological, social, and cultural progress of the widest spectrum; a Big Apple which, despite everything, holds secrets and dangerous cobwebs capable of enveloping the desperate protagonists of the miniseries. Above all, the characters of Vincent, Edgar's puppeteer father, his wife Cassie (Gaby Hoffman, we had already seen and loved her in the Amazon series Transparent), and the tormented detective Ledroit.
Everyone will immerse themselves, willingly or not, into the depths of a submerged city which perhaps holds the key to truly discovering what happened to poor Edgar. A secret that could also revive the destinies of a family unit, the one governed and dominated by Vincent and his wife Cassie, which has long been in a precarious balance between resentments, furious arguments, and internal dramas. Demons and ghosts of the past especially haunt the soul of the protagonist played by Benedict Cumberbatch, forced to process the painful disappearance of his little son in the temporary comfort of alcohol and in the creation of an imaginary friend named Eric, who will support him in the investigation into the real fate of little Edgar. What happened to him? Will he still be alive? And if so, did someone kidnap him?
The drama of being a parent
Questions that will be answered at the end of the six, very exciting episodes of Eric, a product destined for the small screen which combines with great balance two artistic and productive ambitions with great merit: if on the one hand, the miniseries presents itself to the user of the platform as a compelling family drama with a thriller twist, on the other hand, the Eric created by Abi Margan can also turn into a very painful reflection on parental responsibilities in raising their children. Therefore, Edgar's disappearance becomes a driving mechanism for skeletons in the closet that have been dormant for too long in the Anderson household and emerge from the most hidden corners of the protagonists' past. And so, perhaps more than a simple fictional thriller story, Eric is also above all a way of wanting to narrate with the right dosage in the writing phase of the internal drama of being (a good?) parent.
Straddling the psycho-narrative tricks of films like Birdman and Where the Wild Things Are (from the novel of the same name by Dave Eggers), Eric moves precisely on these two parallel tracks, without ever going beyond one or the other. Thanks to a highly classy and talented production team, curated by Abi Morgan and assisted in the control room by the shrewd Lucia Forbes, who is responsible for directing all six episodes that make up the miniseries starring Benedict Cumberbatch once again at the best of his acting skills.
A miniseries of great emotional impact
For these reasons, in conclusion, the Netflix miniseries created by Abi Morgan and with a splendid Benedict Cumberbatch leading the cast is ultimately an acute and painful reflection on being parents and on the influence of parents on the growth and development of children. own children. Eric is a tense and anguished thriller with some truly surprising flashes of psychological dreams that will satisfy every type of spectator's palate: from the most general users of the streaming platform to those with the most refined and insatiable tastes, looking for a compact product, with a length simply perfect (but we, despite everything, would have had more episodes and perhaps greater psychological introspection) and capable of leaving an enormous emotional impact on those who see it.
Which will most likely be the key to the possible success of this television series arriving exclusively on Netflix on Thursday 30 May. Like TV shows with strong media coverage that have recently revived the fortunes of the platform, such as the acclaimed (and extraordinary) Baby Reindeer.