Eric: Bizarro Drama Takes a Deep Dive into Darkest 80s-Era New York
By Karen Gordon
Rating: B
One advantage of a miniseries made for streaming instead of network television is that it can push the boundaries on the emotional intensity of storytelling. That’s made for some of the most interesting television ever. But how much is too much?
That’s a question that might well be applied to the new six-part Netflix series, Eric. Set in 1980s New York, Eric layers on multiple intense issues: racism, police and political corruption, homophobia, pedophilia, homelessness, and family dysfunction.
As if that weren’t enough, every character either has a secret and/or an axe to grind. For a big chunk of the series, there is very little relief from the endless wheel of fraught situations.
Benedict Cumberbatch — in yet another in a series of dislikeable characters — plays Vincent, a puppeteer who has co-created a successful and popular kids show along the lines of Sesame Street, called Good Day Sunshine.
Vincent is a self-centered jerk. He’s belligerent, seems to have oppositional defiance disorder, and drinks too much. He’s miserable to everyone and is basically an asshole.
His marriage to Cassie (a terrific Gaby Hoffman) is seriously on the rocks. The two have a preadolescent son, Edgar (Ivan Howe), who is clearly aware of the state of his parents’ marriage. And although we can see that Vincent loves his son and feels like he’s being encouraging, in practice he’s abusive.
But the two share interests. Edgar has his father’s passion for cartooning and puppets, and to get his attention, he has come up with a new character for the show called Eric.
This is not a small thing. Edgar has been around Vincent’s office long enough to understand that the financial backers of the show feel it’s stagnating and that his father is being pushed to create new characters, which he’s resisting. Edgar’s creation of Eric is a kind of love offering to his dad, but Vincent is too wrapped up in himself to register what his son is trying to do.
He’s about to regret that. Cassie asks Vincent to walk Edgar to school. Vincent is preoccupied and doesn’t. And Edgar never makes it to school that day.
That brings in another key character. Detective Michael Ledroit (McKinely Belcher III in a break-out performance) is the head of the NYPD missing persons department. Ledroit is a sincere, careful, and quiet man, who keeps apart from his other colleagues. He’s also black and closeted, and his older lover is dying of AIDS.
Ledroit is troubled by an unsolved case, a young black kid who has now been missing for almost a year, and whose mother Cecile (Adepero Oduye) continues to quietly press for action to find her son. The two mothers eventually meet, juxtaposing the difference in reaction to each boy’s disappearance.
With Edgar missing, the giant cracks in Cassie and Vincent’s marriage get deeper and less easy to ignore. Secrets are revealed. Vincent, wracked with guilt (he's a jerk, not a monster) descends into a spiral of despair and self-pity, which alienates him from everyone in his world.
In the meantime, Ledroit investigates a range of issues, including the goings-on at a popular but shady local gay bar, The Lux, which is on route between Edgar’s home and school and which pimps out underage boys. He also faces a hostile police chief who seems to constantly be threatening to shut him down.
Eric recreates a realistic, rundown, dirty version of 80s New York, where life spans from the very privileged to the unseen and discarded who live in parts of the subway. There’s deceit and corruption everywhere, and lots of people have motives to do bad things and to cover those bad things up.
Oddly, then, there is also a fantasy character. While Vincent tries to cope with the disappearance of his son and his role in it, the series gives him an imaginary friend. The life-sized character of the puppet Eric follows him around, acting as an inner critic, judging, and harassing Vincent as he grapples with his son’s disappearance.
He believes Edgar left a kind of map of their area in New York, which has son speaking to father in a special visual language. Following it will lead Vincent to Edgar, who he firmly believes is alive.
The series does circle back to the relationships between Vincent, Cassie, and Edgar, and in particular the transformation Vincent has been put through, which is the classic wounded hero story, but by then the series has larded on so many social and political problems, it’s more exhausting than rewarding.
Eric. Created by Abi Morgan, directed by Lucy Forbes. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Gaby Hoffman, McKinely Belcher III, and Ivan Howe. Streaming on Netflix beginning May 30.