Netflix's latest star-studded crime thriller is its most surreal yet
Benedict Cumberbatch, a giant monster puppet and a missing 9-year-old boy?
Netlix’s Eric is a story about a missing child and his parents’ search for him. Sounds a pretty conventional TV plot, right?
Think again. There are enough interesting twists to the concept here to make Eric a potential must-watch for every Netflix subscriber come May 30, when it’s out.
First up, Eric stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the missing kid’s father, while Gaby Hoffmann is the mother. Big-league casting.
And no, Eric is not the name of the lost child. Eric is the name of the puppet Cumberbatch’s Vincent makes in order to help bring son Edgar home.
Eric is the fluffy monster Edgar was drawing in the days before his disappearance, the “monster that lives under his bed.” Vincent is a puppeteer on a popular kids’ TV show — think Sesame Street.
How does that solve a kidnapping? No idea, but you can pick up the feel of Netflix’s Eric from the just-released trailer.
Eric comes from Abi Morgan, a UK writer whose credits include The Iron Lady, Suffragette and River. IMDb also lists The End of the F***ing World’s Lucy Forbes as a director of an unspecified number of episodes.
There are six episodes in total and, judging by the trailer, we may get to see Cumberbatch’s Vincent plumb deeper, darker depths as we work through them.
We haven’t heard masses about Eric in the run up to its release, but its cast was revealed a long time ago now, in February 2023.
Back then here’s what Netflix had to say about lead character Vincent: “Highly intelligent, charismatic yet narcissistic, Vincent is professionally volatile and privately neglectful of his wife Cassie and young son, Edgar.”
Is Vincent Dr. Strange from an alternative universe? It sounds like there will be plenty of dark depths to mine with this one, then.
Eric is out on May 30.