Benedict Cumberbatch Pushed ‘Eric’ Into The Netflix Top 10 — But His “Mean Genius” Schtick Is Starting To Lose Its Luster

If there’s a reason that an oddball crime series where an embittered, addiction-ravaged riff on Muppets creator Jim Henson grapples with the nightmarish disappearance of his son has become a hit on Netflix – apart from the service’s massive marketing reach, of course – it’s probably the presence of Benedict Cumberbatch. Eric, wherein Cumberbatch plays Vincent Sullivan, the creator of a Sesame Street-like program, might have caught some attention with someone else in the leading role, but it seems designed (maybe even overdesigned) to take advantage of what audiences seem to love about Cumberbatch: His unsmiling yet vaguely showboating contempt for the world at large.

Sometimes this takes the form of intellectual gamesmanship so advanced that normal interactions feel like they’re occurring on some impossibly simple beginner’s mode, as in Sherlock, the BBC Holmes adaptation that first made him famous; sometimes this takes the form of mystical powers so vast that they seem to be operating on a different plane even from other superheroes, as in his portrayal of Doctor Strange. Sometimes he’s a real-life genius, like in the biopic The Imitation Game. Eric applies Cumberbatch’s persona to a more niche idea: He’s a Henson-style genius, but a predictably prickly and tortured one, with a kind of purist’s conservatism that seems anathema to the whole Henson/Sesame Street deal. When Vincent’s young son Edgar vanishes from the streets of New York on his walk to school, Vincent becomes increasingly unglued. (He also becomes, for a time, a suspect in the boy’s disappearance.) He’s convinced, among other things, that if he fully realizes the puppet that Edgar has designed, the boy will come home. Once he settles on that idea, Vincent is counseled by an imaginary version of that puppet, offering plainspoken advice – also voiced by Cumberbatch, naturally.

The series, created by Abi Morgan, uses Cumberbatch and his somewhat unlikely popularity to hide a story element in plain sight. It eventually becomes clear that Vincent isn’t just a cranky artist who drinks too much and can treat people insensitively; he’s a terrible father who Edgar downright fears. This should be more obvious than it is; because Cumberbatch is in the role, there’s a certain degree of acceptance of his character’s bad behavior, especially when it can be intellectualized as part of a unique and valuable skill set. When a fellow puppeteer pithily observes that puppets have appeal because “they get to say the things that we can’t,” there’s an unspoken flipside that applies to Vincent. He may think of himself as a caustic truth-teller – a man with no need for a puppet – but he’s actually someone who says whatever he shouldn’t.

It’s a conceit that the show ultimately overplays, however, in an attempt to increase the scope of the show. Set in a mid-1980s New York City, Eric has a little more propulsion than the puppeteer-losing-his-mind logline would suggest. Edgar’s case is handled by Detective Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III), who attempts to link the disappearance to another missing kid. Despite some geographical overlap, hardly anyone is drawing the connection because Marlon, the son of Cecile (Adepero Oduye) is Black, while Edgar is white. We know this because characters say this out loud repeatedly. The show dovetails these two cases to present a contrast between “justice” as it’s found for a moneyed white family, as opposed to the single Black mother whose pain is allowed to sit and fester.

In doing so, Eric falls victim to a new hybridized form of prestige-TV hubris – an insistence on somehow functioning as both a vehicle for a white star, as well as a devastating indictment of the systemic inequalities that the white character encounters, but isn’t directly affected by. There’s a similarly odd dynamic at work in the recent Under the Bridge, a true-crime adaptation told in part from the perspective of a writer played by Riley Keough. Keough plays a fictionalized version of writer Rebecca Godfrey, investigating the killing of a teenager in her hometown and paired with an old friend turned local cop. That cop is Cam Bentland (Lily Gladstone), a Native who’s been adopted by a white family, working alongside her cop father. Though the miniseries is based on Godfrey’s book and real events, Cam’s character is entirely invented – and a storyline connected to appalling adoption practices involving Native children in the 1970s feels awkwardly shoehorned into the narrative at hand.

“Eric falls victim to a new hybridized form of prestige-TV hubris – an insistence on somehow functioning as both a vehicle for a white star, as well as a devastating indictment of the systemic inequalities that the white character encounters, but isn’t directly affected by.”

Under the Bridge has a stronger structural reason for both inventing Cam, and the way that her story with Rebecca is less compelling than the teenagers they’re investigating. Much of the teen story unfolds in the past, while Cam and Rebecca keep the story rooted in the presence. And on a more practical level, Keough and Gladstone are both such commanding performers, create a kind of symmetry, at least, in the show’s lumpy mixture of fact and fiction. Like Cumberbatch in Eric, they’re the hook that draws you into a more complicated story.

Cumberbatch is a significantly bigger star than either of them – but he’s further adrift in Eric. There’s a tenuous connection to the points the show is making about New York City gentrification and the idyllic, kid-friendly version of city life perpetuated by Vincent’s puppet show. But while following an urgent and frightening investigation into the disappearance of a child, the show makes countless detours into Vincent’s breakdown, hammering home every detail (his rich and screwed up parents, his heavy drinking, his troubling conversations with a big monster puppet only he can see) in scene after scene after scene. Sometimes writers debate between showing and telling; Eric makes the all-in decision to do both, showing Vincent’s behavior at length while also having characters make reference to his “acerbic wit.”

That’s what the people are here to see, the show seems to think: Benedict Cumberbatch making his cutting remarks. The idea, presumably, is that they’ll stay and learn a lesson about inequality, privilege, and the plight of New York’s unhoused population. But hold on: It’s not as if Eric is a pre-existing text that Morgan is deepening and recontextualizing. It was her idea in the first place, and as played out in the series, it’s pretty tedious. Why is this show making up a Benedict Cumberbatch mean-genius character as a feint? Especially when his descent into madness and potential redemption are so thinly conceived? The Ledroit character has plenty of stuff going on – he’s gay and closeted in a less accepting time, his lover is dying of AIDS, he’s receiving pushback from his superiors over his investigation even though he’s not necessarily a maverick by nature – that could easily hold focus of a TV series. It’s particularly telling that he only has a few scenes with the Cumberbatch character, who’s off hitting bottom for most of the episodes; it’s like they’re in separate shows entirely.

Of course, the presence of Cumberbatch probably did help sell the show to Netflix, and will attract some eyeballs that might otherwise pass over a grim story about a missing child and the cops who don’t care. It’s hard not to wonder, though, whether Eric is a little too eager to use its star to work within the system, rather than changing it.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.