by Stefano Di Maria
At the end of May, Netflix published ERIC, the story of a missing child and the desperation of parents determined to find him. A miniseries, created and written by Aby Morgan and directed by Lucy Forbes, which has weak and strong points, as you will read in our review, in some ways courageous and not very obvious: one of those shows that however, Despite its obvious flaws, it has plenty of potential to appeal to the general public, as demonstrated by its positioning at the top of the top ten since its release.
Below is the trailer
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ERIC – The plot
Set in New York in the 1980s, Eric is a thrilling new thriller series from Abi Morgan that follows a father desperately searching for his nine-year-old son who disappeared one morning on his way to school.
Vincent, one of the most famous puppeteers in New York and creator of the popular children’s television program “Good Day Sunshine”, struggles to overcome the loss of his son Edgar and becomes increasingly anguished and irascible. Filled with self-hatred and guilt over Edgar’s disappearance, he clings to the child’s drawings of a monstrous blue puppet named Eric, convinced that if ERIC appears on TV Edgar will return home.
As Vincent’s destructive behavior distances him from his family, colleagues and the detectives who try to help him, it is Eric, a convenient illusion, who becomes his only ally in the attempt to bring his son home.
ERIC – The review
The Netflix miniseries has a big starting deficit: the protagonist, Vincent, is unbearable, which certainly doesn’t make it easy to watch. It is equally questionable the gimmick of the dialogues with Eric’s imaginary monster: it is true that the choice of series and film screenwriters to have the protagonists supported by imaginary or deceased characters with whom they converse as if they were real is now widespread, yet there is something here that is out of place and risks alienating those who were expecting the classic thriller psychology on the disappearance of a child. If you approach the vision of ERIC interested in the plot, therefore, know that these are there two strong weaknesses or strengthsdepending on tastes and points of view.
The performances of the actors are certainly the merit of the series, all very good: starting from Benedict Cumberbatch, perfectly placed in the role of the disturbed, drug-addicted and neurotic man; not exactly a model father. Gaby Hoffman is also convincing: appreciated for her role in TRANSPARENT, here she plays the role of the mother of the missing child, tried by a failed marriage and by the terror that her son may be dead. The one holding the whole police story on his shoulders is the equally good McKinley Belcher III, at ease in the role of the black detective who has to hide his homosexuality.
ERIC has an obvious writing flaw, which it seems to want dilute the broth in six episodes even though there is no need: many subplots that could have been done without, against the backdrop of a New York represented in an era marked by racism, violence, pedophilia, poverty and homophobia. So many topics to cover, too many in fact, in a thriller context where flights of fancy are at home in every episode. So much so that at a certain point you have the impression of having lost the key to the problem and finding it again immediately afterwards, but certainly not for the pace and tension that you would expect from a series about the disappearance of a child. Given the slow pace, it takes a lot of patience to get to the end of each episode. If we then return to the antipathy that the protagonist arouses, we can very well say that no, we will not miss this miniseries.
RATING: 3/5
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