‘Eric’ review: Benedict Cumberbatch’s troubled puppeteer never truly captivates

My oh my, this is a strange show. If you’ve not read anything about it in advance, here goes: Eric, written by Abi Morgan (Shame, Suffragette), is about a kid who goes missing in New York, only for his puppeteer father to try to get him back by creating the enormous furry puppet that the boy had been doodling before he ran off. If that sounds like fertile ground for a zany comedy, hold your puppet horses – Eric has absolutely no interest in making you laugh. In fact, it’s far more interested in weighty subjects like homelessness, alcoholism and paedophilia.

It’s also strange, in a coincidental kind of way, that the last six years have given us two shows about middle-aged puppeteer dads looking to find meaning after the disappearance of their son. In 2018, Kidding let Jim Carrey play the role that Benedict Cumberbatch attempts here. The difference, unfortunately for Eric, is that Carrey is a more captivating presence and has a greater capacity for comedy. While it’s easy to believe that a man with Carrey’s face and skills would become a puppeteer, it’s almost impossible to believe that Cumberbatch’s character Vincent would.

Whereas Sherlock made a virtue of Cumberbatch’s aloof nature, Eric shines an unforgiving spotlight on it to the extent that you cannot warm to Vincent despite his tragedy. Add to this the fact that Eric displays none of the innocent glee one might expect from a show so concerned with children’s puppets, and it becomes confusing viewing.

Set in an ’80s New York that is wrestling with corrupt politicians and a homelessness crisis, Eric isn’t just about the struggle for parents Vincent and Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann) to find Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe); it is just as much about the detective working on the case. Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III) doesn’t have it easy: in a tough NYPD department, he is Black, gay and living secretly with a partner dying of AIDS. Belcher is more commanding as the show’s main character but he can’t quite drag the show from the bleak quagmire in which it wallows. Everything the characters endure is relentlessly awful, which can become tiring to watch.

There are a number of clumsy lines: when someone hears the name ‘Anderson’ they immediately say, “Anderson? As in the real-estate guy?” as though there aren’t 50,000 people in New York with the surname ‘Anderson’. And when Vincent is high, he delivers the implausibly eloquent line: “Couldn’t believe the world had entrusted him to us.” These are outweighed, however, by plenty of better ones, even if the focus on the kids’ show that Vincent created – Good Day Sunshine – means that cliché and sentiment are often lurking around the corner.

As Vincent degenerates, drinking an unrealistic amount of vodka, there are a few missing pieces that prevent us from caring enough about his potential reunion with Edgar: one, sadly, is that Edgar never comes alive as a three-dimensional character; another is that when Vincent is accompanied everywhere by Eric, the imaginary puppet Edgar drew, it isn’t clear exactly what function Eric is performing; but the most fatal is that we’ve never really connected to Vincent in the first place. Eric does, undoubtedly, have valid things to say about racial politics in the US – as well as how terrible it is to suppress your true identity. But saying them in this way has created a muddled show that may be trying too many things at once.

‘Eric’ is streaming now on Netflix

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