Cumberbatch shines
Patrick Melrose Debuts Saturday, CraveTV
Patrick Melrose, an impressive Showtime adaptation of Edward St. Aubyn’s semi-autobiographical novels, is about a rich boy who’s raped by his narcissistic father and ignored by his coldly aloof mother. In adulthood, Patrick becomes a heroin addict, clinging to recovery on the fringes of British high society.
The rich are different from you and #MeToo, which can sometimes obstruct the empathy they’re entitled to. It is to Patrick Melrose’s credit that a viewer feels sorry for the protagonist, despite his flaws.
The five-part series stars Benedict Cumberbatch, star of PBS’s Sherlock who hit the big time with Marvel’s superhero movies and an Oscar-nominated performance in The Imitation Game.
Suffice to say that Patrick Melrose is the Cumberbatchiest thing the world has yet seen, which many will see as wonderful news. As a star vehicle, it affords the actor the opportunity to summon all his acting skills into a manic mural of euphoria, misery and whatever other emotions he cares to display.
Part 1 can be both captivating and off-putting, depending on how much a viewer enjoys watching a drug user hit rock bottom in a fancy hotel suite.
It’s 1982 and Patrick (Cumberbatch) learns his father, David (Hugo Weaving), has died in New York. Patrick travels from London to retrieve his father’s ashes, and he chooses the trip to try to quit heroin cold turkey. Most of the hour is spent chronicling Patrick’s descent into hell, pumping himself full of booze, downers and uppers until giving in to heroin.
As Patrick returns to London in the agony of withdrawal, Part 2 takes a flashback to 1967, when David sexually assaults young Patrick (Sebastian Maltz) at the family’s summer place in France, telling the boy that at the very least he’s conferring the lifelong gift of detachment.
The events that transpire are necessarily abhorrent — unambiguously effective in their depiction. The household dysfunction and alcohol abuse are plain to see, yet only one of the Melroses’ several house guests picks up on Patrick’s suffering. His mother, Eleanor (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is herself a study of detachment, either oblivious to her son’s pain or choosing not to see it.
Part 3 flashes forward to a 1990 gala, where the guest of honour is a snooty Princess Margaret (Harriet Walter) and Patrick barely clings to sobriety as he encounters familiar faces from his parents’ past.
Showtime didn’t provide the final two parts of Patrick Melrose. Still, Cumberbatch’s performance is reason to see it through.