Culture | TV While filming his major new Netflix show Eric, Benedict Cumberbatch had to spend a day running through the streets of New York, dressed in a huge blue and white furry monster suit. It was a hot day, and as he sprinted through Sixth Avenue and across Central Park past extras and “random punters”, face fully showing, he though, “Yep it’s me, I’m dressed as a puppet. This will be one of the most wonderfully embarrassing moments of my life.
” But then...
it was fine. “It’s New York,” he reasons. “They’re like ‘Oh my God.
.. anyway as I was saying.
’ It was a momentary distraction.” Did people wonder what Doctor Strange was doing dressed like that? “Yep there was a bit of that.” Eric is a six-part series arriving on the streaming giant this week.
Written by Abi Morgan, whose shows include The Hour and The Split , it is about puppeteer Vincent (Cumberbatch) working on a Sesame Street-style show in New York in the Eighties. When his nine-year-old son Edgar goes missing after walking to school on his own, Vincent spirals out of control, and his inner demons are manifested in a giant monster puppet called Eric – inspired by his son’s drawings – who follows him around, often berating him. It’s a show with clear influences and nods to other work, but ultimately it is unlike anything else.
Cumberbatch was drawn to the project because of Morgan – and “her exotic imagination” – and threw himself into the character of Vincent, a geni.