Eric review: Benedict Cumberbatch outshone by Netflix's Muppetesque Eric but he's still pretty good


I was worried Abi Morgan had gone soapy. The Hour was supposed to be the British Mad Men. It was supposed to be about journalism, the BBC and the making of a new current affairs programme. But it lost its nerve, veered into spy caperdom, stopping off at a very big house in the country as if by Downton Abbey decree. And then there were the romantic entanglements – very soapy.
Soapier still was The Split. That was entirely about romantic entanglements. A dynasty of divorce lawyers disentangling themselves from the entanglements of their clients to knock off for the night and get involved in their own entanglements. Still, the fees bought some very nice kitchens, one of which outperformed the great Nicola Walker. No mean feat.
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Hide AdBut you can’t call screenwriter Morgan’s latest drama soapy. Not when the Eric of the title is a big, blue, furry Muppet-esque monster which outperforms the great Benedict Cumberbatch.


Actually, the recreation of edgy early 1980s New York outperforms Cumberbatch. I took the Laker Skytrain to the Big Apple around that time when it was frighteningly exciting to be sat in a downtown cafe and peering over a copy of Village Voice as the city reeled and lurched. This brings it all back and who knew you could be nostalgic for mountains of uncollected rubbish?
It should be said that Cumberbatch is still very good. That is, very good at being arrogant, bumptious, priggish and a nightmare to be around, both at work and home. He’s Vince, a puppeteer on a Sesame Street-type TV show. Gaby Hoffmann is his wife Cassie and Ivan Howe their son Edgar, nine years old, who heads out after another night of his parents’ bickering but never makes it to school.
There’s a lot going on here. The disintegrating marriage. The probable affair (Cassie). The show, Good Day Sunshine, under pressure for viewers. The NYPD under pressure to make arrests. The cops, and the press, neglecting another missing kid because he’s black. The black detective keeping his homosexuality secret. The tec’s partner contemplating – possibly Aids-related – death. The wild nightclub’s sex trafficking denials. The property tycoon - Vincent’s father - building condos on the site of a homeless shelter. The underclass forced underground to live in sewers. The campaigning politicians vowing to sluice them all away. Big, grown-up, serious issues, all of them gripping and deftly juggled by Morgan.
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Hide AdThen there’s Eric. Good Day Sunshine needs a new puppet so Edgar had been sketching one before he disappeared. Vince finds the drawings and determines to bring his cuddly, horned ogre to life, hoping Edgar will see Eric and come home. But Vince, alone, can already see Eric. It rides the subway with him, ticks him off and eggs him on, provoking him into bizarre outbursts like: “I know it’s f*****g Tolstoy!” At this moment Vince is being questioned as a suspect. Eric roars: “You blew it! Now the cops know you’re Looney Tunes!” All of which would be funny if the story wasn’t so tragic.


The week’s other corking drama is The Sympathizer from the Pulitzer-winning novel by Thanh Nguyen which flashes up the caption: “In America they called it the Vietnam War. In Vietnam they called it the American War.” I didn’t know this and so resolve to pay proper attention, which is just as well, for in the beginning I’m not sure I can honestly claim to know what’s happening. The scenes in subtitles don’t help - the writing is far too small and invisible against a white background. The timeline jumps all over the place. This is beginning to feel like homework. But then Robert Downey Jr who’s been speaking English but mumbling a lot says loud and clear: “Todd Rundgren.” The gloriously demented rock genius is one of my favourites and that’s me, I’m hooked.
There are a number of musical references and many more movie references but The Sympathizer is mostly about the internal struggle of a double-agent, known as the Captain and played by Hoa Xouande, who’s spying for the Viet Cong in the north while working for the secret police in the south. “I am a spy, a sleeper, a spooker.” he says. “A man with two faces, cursed to see every issue from both sides.”
That’s how the Captain introduces himself. By the end of the first episode Saigon has fallen and he’s leaping into the hold of a trundling plane bound for Los Angeles as the airport burns. The Sympathizer could be exciting espionage but it’s more than that: satirical and subversive and filmed in a hip cartoon style with the Rundgren-referencing Downey showing himself to be a man with four faces and having an absolute riot.
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Hide AdSwapping Weetabix hair for slaphead and then another odd rug, he goes from being our hero’s cigar-chomping CIA mentor to a camp uni professor to a bullish congressman before, most hilariously, becoming a gonzo movie-maker not dissimilar to Francis Ford Coppola directing a flick not dissimilar to Apocalypse Now. This will be the last word on the Vietnam War, giving voice at last to the Vietnamese, although no actual dialogue has been written for them. Still, there’s a part for Hollywood’s favourite token always-bumped-off Asian. “You’re the guy that got beaten to death with brass knuckles by Robert Mitchum,” says the Captain. “Yes,” he says, “I’m the Chinese railroad worker that got stabbed by Ernest Borgnine and I’m the Japanese soldier that got shot in the head by Sinatra.”
The Outlaws has reached season three and it still seems incredible that Stephen Merchant managed to persuade Christopher Walken to appear in a comedy-drama set in Bristol about community service. Walken’s return is delayed but until then the show has a lot going for it, not least the confidence in its looseness and zaniness.
Jessica Gunning – destined to forever wear the prefix “Baby Reindeer star … ” – is supposedly in charge but fails to spot a dead body arriving at the new base, a city farm. Clare Perkins is the most right-on member of the team who reflects: “I regret being thrown out of Live Aid for protesting.” “About the whole white saviour complex?” someone wonders. “No, cos Phil Collins got way more time than Sade.” And Eleanor Tomlinson is permanently having sex. The noise from the bedroom even drowns out Alison Hammond on This Morning. The merest mention of “ridged McCoy’s crisps” turns her on. Clearly Tomlinson, who recently appeared in wife-swapping drama The Couple Next Door, has decided that bare-chested men wielding scythes simply don’t cut it anymore. (See what I did there?).
Eric Netflix ****The Sympathizer Sky Atlantic ****The Outlaws BBC1 ***
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