Benedict Cumberbatch is no stranger to getting tangled with fictional mysteries but, as far as we can tell, Sherlock Holmes never went out of his way to use an enormous blue puppet as his primary investigative tool.
There’s a first time for everything and Eric looks to be a particularly singular “first time” for Netflix, even amongst the streamer’s eclectic library of originals.
Created by Abi Morgan, Eric stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Vincent, a puppeteer living in 1980s New York and the host of the popular children’s show Good Day Sunshine. Things take a dark turn when his nine-year-old son Edgar goes missing during his commute to school, and Vincent falls to particularly destructive depths, obsessively creating a giant blue monster puppet named Eric, who Vincent believes holds the key to bringing Edgar home. As tensions boil with his wife, coworkers, and the detective who develops a similar desperation for solving the case, Vincent soon realizes that Eric might be the only good monster of the many that reside in him.
By the looks of it, Eric will pull few punches as it plunges us into Vincent’s raw turmoil in a city rife with turmoil of its own, but the real question is when we can see these punches for ourselves.
When does Eric release on Netflix?
Eric is due to hit Netflix on May 30, with all six episodes of the miniseries seemingly set to drop all at once. In other words, Eric will be available in its entirety come the tail-end of May, and there won’t be a second season to look ahead to; once the curtain closes on the sixth episode, Eric‘s story is done.
Alongside Cumberbatch, the series will star Gaby Hoffmann as Vincent’s wife Cassie, and McKinley Belcher III as detective Michael Ledroit.
(featured image: Netflix)
