Review of the miniseries Eric

Upon finishing my master’s thesis in the beginning of May, 2024, I suddenly had a lot of free time on my hands. I worked on blog posts, watched a lot of movies, and read a lot during this time, as I was waiting for mid-June, when I would be shipped off to South Korea to learn advanced Korean on a State Department scholarship.

This meant I was on Netflix almost every single day, and I saw as new releases were being dropped each week. I opened it one day and was confused to see Benedict Cumberbatch’s face on the show Eric’s poster, as I had no idea this show even existed out in the world.

So I looked at the synopsis, and while I am interested in depictions of New York City during this period, as a history nerd, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to watch the show. I added it to my to watch list, waited a day, and then decided to watch an episode just to test the waters.

And that was how I ended up watching all of Eric over the course of three days. I allotted myself two episodes per day so I wouldn’t just waste a ton of time watching this show in one go, as I had other things I should be doing at the time.

Anyways, here’s my review! Enough with the rambling.

An alcoholic puppeteer searches for his missing son in New York City’s dark underbelly.

This show is set during the 1980s, and if you know your New York City history, the city was pretty gritty back then. Up until the 2000s New York City was not the place that people imagine it is today, and it was full of crime and a lot of dark gang activity happening in the shadows. What Warhol and his gang saw on a daily basis was not always gorgeous.

Anyways, our main character in this show is Vincent. He lives with his wife Cassie and nine-year-old son Edgar in New York, and he’s a professional puppeteer. Every day he goes to work and performs on the show Good, Day Sunshine, which he helped create with a guy who doesn’t actually do anything on it now.

Vincent is pretty volatile and has some issues, and he fights with his wife a lot, too. That leads to friction inside of the him, which Edgar notices on a daily basis. One day, Cassie and Vincent are fighting over who should take him to school, and Vincent says he should just walk himself.

Edgar sneaks out the door while they’re arguing about it, and the last person to see him round the corner is their neighbor. Edgar never comes home that day, kickstarting a major investigation that has missing child posters all over the city.

Vincent descends further from this, and begins drinking heavily. He also begins imagining a puppet that Edgar designed, Eric, is following around and giving him terrible advice about his life and what to do. Vincent becomes more and more hostile, while Cassie is hysteric about everything going on.

While he’s fired from his job, Vincent decides the only thing to do is to use Eric, who no one else can see but him, and go find his son himself. As people are accused of taking him right and left, he becomes convinced his son was not kidnapped and left behind a map of where he is going.

At the same time, the cop in charge of this investigation, Michael Ledroit, has some of his own subplots. Ledroit has been looking for another missing teenager, Marlon, whose mother keeps calling the police station to try and get them to further the cause.

Ledroit is also a gay man, and his partner has AIDs. The more we progress through these episodes, the more we humanize these characters and their struggles, while also realizing the truth of what happened to Edgar.

Overall Thoughts

I think this was an interesting miniseries to watch on so many levels. There are a lot of elements that are indicative of NYC culture at the time: a puppet named Eric who’s inspiration and background is that he’s homeless, the actual homeless situation in the 1980s, the AIDs crisis, and then the missing children.

That said, this was a lot to pack into six episodes. We kind of get a conclusion within episode six, which is the final episode, but I found myself wanting more from this show.

It moves quickly in a way where I wanted it to slow down, if that makes sense. The acting is wonderful throughout the show and I felt immersed in what it had to say, although I was gawking at Cumberbatch’s accent in this. I’ve never watched his American content, so this was hilarious to me.

Anyways, go see this if you haven’t already and are interested. It’s only six episodes!

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