Benedict Cumberbatch is raw, messy and better than ever
It’s hard to imagine another actor as Patrick Melrose
Perhaps there’s room for just one more.
The past 20 years have brought more than enough white, male, rich anti-heroes to TV, yet networks keep pumping them out in new series. There have been some great successes (“Breaking Bad,” “The Sopranos”), some middling dramas (“Ray Donovan,” “Ozark”) and plenty of failures “Low Winter Sun,” if you can remember). And now, we have “Patrick Melrose.”
Technically, the troubled British addict with abusive parents predates many of the anti-heroes you love (or love to hate). Based on the series of semi-autobiographical novels by Edward St. Aubyn, the first published in 1992, Showtime’s limited series, airing over the next five weeks (Saturdays, 9 p.m.) portrays significant moments in the character’s life. We see Patrick as a child, a heroin-addicted young adult, a man in recovery, an unhappy husband and a reflective son at his mother’s funeral.
Played as an adult by Benedict Cumberbatch, the series is an immaculate portrait of a very troubled man, a showcase for Cumberbatch’s prodigious range as an actor and also an incisive kneecapping of the idle rich. In three episodes made available for review, it’s both captivating and revolting, addictive and terribly hard to watch. It’s not quite what you’d expect from the suave, Tumblr-friendly British actor, known for Shakespearean stage productions and PBS’s “Sherlock,” but it’s his best role yet.
“Melrose” benefits from some of the most lauded source material in recent history, but it doesn’t get trapped by its own pretentiousness. The adaptation creates a uniquely visual story from the novels, yet still feels intensely literary, and each episode spins a vivid vignette that’s simultaneously unnerving, colourful and profound.
The series swaps the order of the first two novels, starting not with Patrick’s childhood but with his young adulthood, when he goes on a drug-fueled binge during a weekend in New York to collect the ashes of his father. It’s a smart move, introducing us to Patrick the man, not the boy, and implies that there was something sinister going on in his childhood.
The première visualizes both addiction and drug use in novel and anesthetically exciting ways. It’s a downright exhausting hour that never shies away from Patrick’s pain and suffering. He takes an astounding number of drugs, switching between uppers and downers on a whim. He vomits and loses consciousness, and struggles with the shakes, withdrawal and hallucinations. Set in the 1980s, its colour palette borrows from the decade’s neon excess, with imagery nearly as surreal as what’s in Patrick’s mind.
Yet the next episode shifts gears, flashing back to Patrick’s abusive 1960s childhood in a crumbling French villa. Less glam rock and more Agatha Christie, the simple story of one day in the Melrose family’s life unfolds in the creaky mansion like a horror film, as insidious threats lurk at every turn.
In the third episode, the tone changes yet again: Now we’re at a posh black-tie party at a British aristocrat’s estate in 1990. It’s a credit to writer David Nicholls and director Edward Berger that despite the wildly different look and tone of each episode, they fit together seamlessly.
It’s hard to imagine that the role could have been brought to life by any other actor. Viewers have seen his odious, pompous side and whip-fast dialogue in characters like Sherlock Holmes and Marvel’s Doctor Strange, but in “Melrose” his abrasiveness is defensive, and his bad behaviour (at points) drug-fueled. Cumberbatch is more vulnerable, and more openly emotional, than he’s been before.
He’s joined by an outstanding supporting cast, including Hugo Weaving as his horrid father, Jennifer Jason Leigh as his neglectful mother, and a brief turn from Allison Williams as the girl of his dreams.
Patrick’s life may be in shambles, but the series manages to assemble its disparate pieces into something deeply beautiful. It might just be powerful enough for Cumberbatch’s notoriously spirited fan base to forget all about Sherlock and Strange.