The creator of series like River, The Split and The Hour and screenwriter of films like The Suffragettes and The woman of iron is the showrunner and author of this miniseries whose starting point is the disappearance of a 9-year-old boy on the streets of New York in the ’80s.
Eric (United Kingdom/2024). Showrunner and script: Abi Morgan. Direction: Abi Morgan and Lucy Forbes. Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, McKinley Belcher III, Gaby Hoffmann, Ivan Howe, Phoebe Nicholls, Jeff Hephner, Clarke Peters, Kosha Engler, José Pimentão and Dan Fogler. Music: Keefus Ciancia. Photography: Benedict Spence. Duration: 6 episodes of between 45 and 55 minutes each. Available on Netflix from Thursday, May 30.
There is a two-meter monster with a hairy body, a guttural voice and large fangs that only exists in the mind of its creator, but it is not the recent imaginary friends. There are puppets and a children’s program, but it is not Sesame Street. There’s also a missing child in a New York City that exudes eighties character and a police investigation by a troubled African-American officer with more doubts than certainties, but it’s not True Detective. There is a lot of political thread, intrigue and shady business, but it is not House of Cards.
From the mixture of these components arises Eric, the miniseries of six episodes of between 45 and 55 minutes that arrives this week on Netflix. That it is part of the catalog of that platform explains the integration of elements from a priori very different universes. A coexistence that at times contributes to rarefy and add mystery to the story, but at other times makes it seem like a collage in which each party seeks to bring grist to its mill.
It all starts with a distraught man in front of the TV cameras asking for his son to appear alive. A time jump takes the action back to two days earlier and finds Vincent (Benedict Cumberbatch) operating one of the puppets from the children’s show he created years ago. The good vibes and hopeful messages of the plush creatures are opposite to a family life made up of fights with his wife and a tendency to drink that flirts with alcoholism. Vincent is also the son of a powerful real estate developer, the same one who with his bulldozers is changing the face of the city and has business ties with the local public services priests.
The day after an intense fight with his wife Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann), his son goes to school alone. But he never completes the couple of blocks that separate him from his house, thus unleashing a storm in the core of a family that already had a few. It is there that Inspector Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III) enters the scene, who also has his own ghosts and some unfinished business with the owner of a bar located halfway between Vincent’s house and his son’s school.
The tormented Vincent has an idea: if he builds a puppet based on his son’s designs for the show, he will surely see it and come home. The problem is that this creature materializes first in his imagination, operating as a kind of voice of his conscience. The only one who sees the Eric of the title is, of course, Vincent.
The series has a remarkable recreation of the period and succeeds in building its intrigue around the disappearance, with the inevitable suspects who cease to be suspects and others on whom they will focus their attention as the plot progresses. However, as often happens with Netflix productions, the accumulation of subplots generates several moments of dispersion that prevent the series from finding its tone.
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