Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Patrick Melrose’ on Netflix, where Benedict Cumberbatch is a man at war with his addictions and personal demons  (2024)

Patrick Melrose arrives on Netflix as part of a Cumber-content punch up. While the streamer already features Benedict Cumberbatch in Power of the Dog and The Imitation Game, the premiere of his new limited series Eric will be accompanied by 1917 and this brilliantly caustic five-episode miniseries, directed by Edward Berger (The Terror, All Quiet on the Western Front) and starring Cumberbatch in the title role, which originally premiered on Showtime and Sky back in 2018. Based on the book series by Edward St Aubyn, Patrick Melrose received numerous Emmy nominations, won BAFTAs for Best Mini-Series and Best Leading Actor, and features a stellar cast alongside Cumberbatch, including Hugo Weaving, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Holliday Grainger.

PATRICK MELROSE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The ringer rattles on a dark green table top rotary phone. It is 1982. “Patrick, Is that you?…I’m in New York…Rather bad news…Your father died the night before last…”

The Gist: While it looks at first like Patrick Melrose (Cumberbatch) has doubled over with grief upon learning that his father David (Weaving) has died, he’s actually just reaching down to grasp a hypodermic needle, which fell under the side table after Patrick’s most recent injection of heroin. So the old bastard’s gone and died, he’ll summarize in one of his frequent and frequently salty voiceovers. “What did that feel like? Pain or rage? Were you scared? God, I hope so.” Patrick will take the comfort of lovers like the willing Debbie (Morfydd Clark) or the cynical Julia (Jessica Raine); he’ll also take their Valium while reiterating his adoration for heroin and musing that he might finally give up hard drugs. He could do that, and maybe he finally will. But what is the source of the void within him, the one Patrick temporarily fills with smack, co*ke, ‘ludes, and booze? His journey will start with 48 frenetic hours in New York, where he must pick up his father’s ashes, attempt to maintain outward stability, and hopefully not submit to other, darker urges.

With David Melrose’s death, we begin to learn about the wealthy man’s character – no compromise, best or nothing, don’t trust anyone – but also about his fractured relationship with Patrick, which is revealed in flashbacks full of suggested trauma and emotional abuse. (Patrick Melrose is played as a boy by Sebastian Maltz.) Beginning in 1982, the series travels through the decades across five episodes. And by the time 2005 rolls around, Patrick will have found new highs and lows as a person, even as he continues to try and process how his father treated him and how his mother Eleanor (Leigh) seems to have let it happen.

While the Patrick Melrose cast is uniformly terrific, this is Benedict Cumberbatch’s show, and that makes it particularly binge-able for anyone who’s a fan of the actor’s trademark breadth and intensity and who might have missed it the first time around. There is a lot of serious stuff here, including emotional and physical trauma, suicidal thoughts, rampant drug use, and revelations from old wounds reopened. But Patrick Melrose is also bitingly funny, powerfully directed, and full of chances for Cumberbatch to channel a kind of redemption for his very broken, but very watchable main character.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Patrick Melrose is at least partly set in 1980s New York City, which also happens to be the setting for Netflix’s Eric, where Cumberbatch plays a puppeteer struggling with the disappearance of his son and the more frequent appearances of a giant blue monster puppet. And in 2020, Melrose director Edward Berger helmed Your Honor for Showtime, which featured an all-consuming performance from Bryan Cranston. (All-consuming performances, of course, are the norm for both Cranston and Cumberbatch.)

Our Take: In 2024, we know and love a Cumberbatchian performance. The range, the intensity, the unexpected ease with comedy. We know and love that stuff so much that Benedict Cumberbatch has built on it with a kind of humorous meta-extension of his established persona, like when he’s hosting Saturday Night Live or even when he’s cutting down Tony Stark with one-liners as Dr. Strange. Which is why it’s such a thrill to return to Patrick Melrose six years after its debut.

Cumberbatch was already a star when it premiered, of course. He’d already landed Emmys and BAFTAs for Sherlock. But playing the twitchy, acerbic, cynical, hilarious, self-absorbed, and very emotionally scarred Melrose brought all of the actor’s considerable talents to bear, and often brought them to bear in the course of a single scene. Physically expressing the fits and starts of an addict looking for his fix, diluting hours of soul-searching and clinical care into a frazzled internal dialogue between himself, his therapist, and his father, with the added input of his NYC heroin dealer – and with Cumberbatch shuttling through each of their accents as Melrose stumbles and frets, high as hell in his fancy hotel room – is to watch, fascinated, as an actor totally rips into a role. And what’s equally fascinating? He makes Patrick, who Allison Williams as Marianne correctly calls a “self-involved little sh*t,” into a character who is totally compelling despite his myriad faults. And if none of that does it for you, just stick around to watch Cumberbatch transform his features and limbs into Silly Putty once Melrose gets ahold of some 1980s quaaludes.

Sex and Skin: There are a few sexy situations, and sex happening in situations. But maybe what you need to remember about this series is Decider’s headline from back when it premiered in 2018: “‘Patrick Melrose’ Is A Benedict Cumberbatch Thirst Trap.”

Parting Shot: He’s decided. It required copious amounts of street drugs, and a bungled, half-co*cked suicide attempt, but Patrick Melrose has decided. “I’m going to get clean.” Which is great! But then there’s the thought of what comes after. And for the very first time, Patrick cries for real.

Sleeper Star: It’s a toss-up between Hugo Weaving as the elitist, boorish and profoundly awful David Melrose, who we meet by reputation and in flashbacks, or Benedict Cumberbatch’s spot-on impersonation of Hugo Weaving as the elitist, boorish, and profoundly awful David, who Patrick knows will never fully depart his memory.

Most Pilot-y Line: Patrick’s serious trauma can be pretty delicious when it becomes fuel for Cumberbatch to deliver lines like this: “Ironic that my father’s remains were so hard to find, when I have no trouble discovering them in myself.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Benedict Cumberbatch is a revelation in Patrick Melrose, with a multi-faceted performance – many moods, many accents, many states of relative sobriety – that centers the hard hitting emotions of the series in a character who’s never too f*cked up not to root for.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.