Monster at large
Real fears come to life in ‘Eric’
Some know him as Sherlock Holmes, others know him as Doctor Stephen Strange, and based on the title of his next project, a fair few might assume that Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Imitation Game,” 2014) now also stars as “Eric” — but it is far more complicated than that.
In “Eric,” Netflix’s new limited series, premiering Thursday, May 30, on the streamer, two-time Oscar nominee Cumberbatch stars as Vincent Anderson, a well-known puppeteer on the fictional children’s TV show “Good Day Sunshine.” Also a devoted father,Vincent uses one of his son’s creations — a monster named Eric — as his inspiration in a tireless crusade for justice.
Billed as a six-episode thriller miniseries created by BAFTA- and Emmy-winning writer/producer Abi Morgan (“The Iron Lady,” 2011), “Eric” “follows a desperate father as he battles his demons on the vibrant, dangerous and intoxicating streets of ‘80s New York in a race to bring home his missing son” (per Netflix).
As described by Netflix on its press website Tudum, “Eric” is a fantastical story rooted in very real terror. When Vincent’s nine-year-old son, Edgar (new talent Ivan Howe), goes missing while on his way to school one day, the puppeteer’s entire life is thrown into disrepair. Distressed and blaming himself for the tragic disappearance,Vincent finds hope in a drawing Edgar had once created of a large blue monster named Eric, who supposedly lives under Edgar’s bed. So lost in his grief and helplessness, it isn’t long before Vincent comes up with a plan: “If he can get Eric on TV, then Edgar will come home” (per Netflix).
And so begins Vincent’s obsessive tether to Eric.
“As Vincent’s progressively destructive behaviour alienates his family, his work colleagues and the detectives trying to help him,” reads an article on Tudum, “it’s Eric, a delusion of necessity, who becomes his only ally in the pursuit to bring his son home.”
Highlighting a terrifying time in New York City’s history, “Eric” is set when the AIDS epidemic was reaching its peak, crime was still on the rise following a string of serial killers in the city during the 1970s and the disappearance of sixyear-old Etan Patz helped spawn the “Stranger Danger” movement many still reference today.
Although it has not explicitly been stated that the events in “Eric” are based on Patz’s real-life case, there certainly are similarities. Patz, a six-year-old New Yorker, disappeared on the way to his SoHo neighbourhood bus stop in 1979, never to be seen or heard from again. Despite this hardly being the first child abduction in the city, Patz’s vanishing worked as a catalyst for change, prompting discussions around citywide safety and ushering in new laws aimed at protecting the city’s youth from dangerous offenders.
As Patz was one of the first missing children to appear on a milk carton, his case saw national attention and remained in the public eye until its resolution nearly four decades later when, in 2017, former convenience store clerk Pedro Hernandez was convicted of murdering the child. Patz and other young victims like him are remembered each May 25 (the date Patz went missing) since 1983, when then-President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the day National Missing Children’s Day.
“Eric,” meanwhile, gives viewers an inside look at the trauma, grief and layers of hardship caused by such a tragic event.
“It is rooted in a lot of realworld issues,” Cumberbatch told The Hollywood Reporter, “looking at parenthood, looking at marriage, looking at mental health, looking at the AIDS pandemic, but also the ongoing crises of homophobia [and] of racism in institutions.”
“When Abi [Morgan] first pitched ‘Eric’ to us, it gave us goosebumps,” executive producers Jane Featherstone (“MI-5”) and Lucy Dyke (“The Split”) told Tudum. “It is an extraordinary piece of writing, inspired by Abi’s experience of New York in the mid-1980s, a city rotten to its core but on the cusp of change.”
Featherstone and Dyke — known for their work on HBO’s “Chernobyl” and Netflix’s “Black Mirror,” respectively — are just two of “Eric’s” high-profile execs, alongside the series’ director Lucy Forbes (“This Is Going to Hurt”), creator Morgan, BAFTA nominee Holly Pullinger (“Don’t Forget the Driver”) and series star Cumberbatch.
Joining Cumberbatch in front of the camera are Gaby Hoffmann (“Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty”) as Cassie Anderson, Dan Fogler (“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” 2016) as Lennie Wilson, Phoebe Nicholls (“Transformers: The Last Knight,” 2017) as Anne Anderson, Jeff Hephner (“For All Mankind”) as Richard Castillo, Amy Louise Pemberton (“DC’s Legends of Tomorrow”) as Dana Nokes and McKinley Belcher III (“Ozark”) as Det. Michael Ledroit. Additional cast members include Donald Sage Mackay (“The Regime”), Erika Soto (“Vida”), David Denman (“Mare of Easttown”), Clarke Peters (“The Wire”), Adepero Oduye (“12 Years a Slave,” 2013), Alexis Molnar (“Emergence”), Roberta Colindrez (“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” 2014) and Bamar Kane (“Father & Soldier,” 2022), among others.