Already in its initial premise, Eric seems like the kind of drama that will break your heart. It's a series centred around one father's search for his missing son, after all – how could it not? But quickly enough, you start to realise that the new Netflix series is far from being solely about this one emotional case. In fact, Eric is a beautifully executed Trojan horse, luring us in with one premise and surprising us with so many overlapping themes – homelessness, the '80s AIDS crisis, racism – you'd think at one point it would fall victim to the way that some TV dramas can feel overcrowded.
Like a litany of spinning plates, however, Abi Morgan's expertly-penned series remains grounded in its central themes that only become more glaringly obvious the deeper we delve into the show's final episodes. Eric follows Benedict Cumberbatch as Vincent Anderson, a well-known puppeteer and creator of the incredibly popular kids show Good Day Sunshine. Akin to Sesame Street, Vincent is the mainstay of the group and is brimming with ideas for how to make the show better, obsessively working on ideas but blowing off steam in nightclubs and drinking with his colleagues.
The idea of a show within a show is a novel concept here, providing an extended metaphor for the way Good Day Sunshine is also based in New York, a city that is hiding many murky secrets (and monsters) beneath its surface. Soon enough, the disappearance of Edgar plays out in a pulsating series of events, with suspicion .
