I’m entirely torn about this series. On the one hand, it’s legitimately good: it has an original and intriguing premise, stars Benedict Cumberbatch, is beautifully shot and atmospheric, and has a fantastically watchable mystery. At its heart, it is all the things that usually keep me interested.
Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion. On the other hand, it’s also about a couple whose 10-year-old son goes missing while walking alone to school one morning in 1980s New York. Cumberbatch plays his dad, a puppeteer, who’s desperate to find out what happened to his son Edgar.
Through the course of the series, the story gets steadily more unexpected, as his character goes to extreme lengths to track down his son. If you’ve already dipped in, you’ll know what I’m talking about: central to the story is a giant blue puppet called Eric. I’d love to riff about all the theories doing the rounds as to what it all means, but I can’t, because I only got through one episode.
I just can’t let my brain drift to a place that allows me to ruminate on what it might feel like for your child to go missing — it’s all just far too harrowing. It’s a problem I’m having a lot lately with television shows — heck, even the 6pm news — where it’s all just too much to willingly subject myself to. It’s how I felt about The Tattooist Of Auschwitz, another show I knew was objectively good, but couldn’t bring myself to watch.
Ther.
