X
- 2018
- TV-MA
- SHOWTIME
- 2018
- TV-MA
- SHOWTIME
Summary The five-episode limited series based on the novels by Edward St. Aubyn spans several decades of Patrick Melrose's (Benedict Cumberbatch) life that included physical abuse from his father (Hugo Weaving), a mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who did nothing to stop it, alcoholism, heroin addiction, recovery, marriage, and fatherhood.
- 2018
- TV-MA
- SHOWTIME
- 2018
- TV-MA
- SHOWTIME
Patrick Melrose
Season 1 Premiere: May 12, 2018
80
6.2
Where to Watch
Summary The five-episode limited series based on the novels by Edward St. Aubyn spans several decades of Patrick Melrose's (Benedict Cumberbatch) life that included physical abuse from his father (Hugo Weaving), a mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who did nothing to stop it, alcoholism, heroin addiction, recovery, marriage, and fatherhood.
Where to Watch
All Seasons
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 32 Critic Reviews
80
84% Positive
27 Reviews
27 Reviews
13% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
3% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 32 Critic Reviews
80
84% Positive
27 Reviews
27 Reviews
13% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
3% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
To be honest, it’s also not the easiest viewing experience, especially if you lack awareness of the depths to which Cumberbatch and St. Aubyn push Patrick. Watching Cumberbatch race through so many character shades proves dizzying in that first hour. But in return, subsequent episodes allow the viewer to appreciate his periods of steadiness and calm. ... Nicholls makes optimal use of St. Aubyn’s silvery language throughout the script. Edward Berger’s direction and James Friend’s cinematography ensure the visual experience speaks as loudly and purposefully as the people in Patrick’s world.
Turns out, Camberbatch and company have done quite well. ... Patrick Melrose gives you the star at his Cumberbatchiest, while also exposing an audience that might otherwise never know them to the superlative St. Aubyn books.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 190 User Ratings
6.2
61% Positive
115 Ratings
115 Ratings
7% Mixed
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
32% Negative
61 Ratings
61 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 190 User Ratings
6.2
61% Positive
115 Ratings
115 Ratings
7% Mixed
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
32% Negative
61 Ratings
61 Ratings
A one-man show by Cumberbatch. Patrick Melrose is raw and real life of a person through different timelines.
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Remarkable, decades-traversing new miniseries ... [Patrick Melrose] is a soulful, careening tale told with both novelistic sweep and deeply personal emotion.
Patrick's life may be in shambles, but the series manages to assemble its disparate pieces into something deeply beautiful. It might just be powerful enough for Cumberbatch's notoriously spirited fan base to forget all about Sherlock and Strange. Maybe.
Perhaps in its final hours, Patrick Melrose can grind out a few relevant points regarding the entitled characters it loves and skewers; the class system is clearly on the mind ofDavid Nicholls, the writer who adapted Edward St. Aubyn’s novels for the screen, yet a specific statement has yet to emerge. A limited series can’t only be about one man’s performance, even if the actor does his part to earn the responsibility.
None of these episodes are bad, but they lack the magic trick that is St. Aubyn’s prose, replacing the books’ singular mix of high style and bleak substance with the energetic familiarities of genre.
Unless you have a mysterious fascination with ravaged children or junkies coming apart at the seams, this show is best avoided.
Brilliantly acted; equal parts hilarious and harrowing
Directed by Edward Berger, and written for the screen by David Nicholls, this five-part miniseries is based on the semi-autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St. Aubyn, published between 1992 and 2011.
Each of the five episodes is based on a single novel, with each set in a different year. In the first episode, "Bad News" (set in 1982, and actually the second novel in the series), Patrick (Benedict Cumberbatch), in the midst of a debilitating heroin addiction, receives word that his sybaritic father David (a terrifying Hugo Weaving) has died in New York, and he must collect the body. In "Never Mind" (the first novel in the sequence), as Patrick goes through heroin withdrawal upon returning from New York, he thinks back to 1967 and his time in the family's French villa, where David first **** him. In "Some Hope" (set in 1990), Patrick, now clean, reluctantly attends a banquet for Princess Margaret (Harriet Walter). In "Mother's Milk" (set in 2003), Patrick, now sober for several years, and working as a barrister, visits the villa with his family, where his mother Eleanor (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is extremely sick, having suffered a stroke. The stress results in Patrick drinking heavily. In "At Last" (set in 2005), his drinking has spiralled out of control following the dissolution of his marriage.
The show wastes no time in establishing how severe Patrick's addictions are. In the opening scene of the first episode, he answers a telephone, to learn that his father has died. However, he looks and talks as if he is slightly out of sync with everything else. Struggling to keep himself upright, he sways, droops, seems about to fall asleep. Then he picks up a syringe. Upon hanging up the phone, he stares at the syringe, and his eyes come into focus for the first time. It's a stark introduction to the character, immediately establishing the hold drugs have on him.
The show employs a number of stylistic devices to draw us into his interiority - dialogue only Patrick and the audience can hear, unnatural lighting changes corresponding to his mood, glitches in the picture in sync with his psychotic breaks, the bleeding of the past into the present (a room in the present will remind him of a room in the past, and suddenly he'll be there; he opens a door in 1982, and we cut to him standing in an open doorway in 1967).
Aesthetically, each episode is grounded in a different genre. "Bad News" is a yuppie version of Trainspotting (1996), a dark night of the soul awash in non-diegetic purples and greens, where the formal chaos mirrors the breakdown of Patrick's mind; "Never Mind" is a lurid summer retreat, along the lines of Call Me by Your Name (2017), with a preponderance of deep yellows and reds; "Some Hope" is an Upstairs, Downstairs (1971)/Gosford Park (2001)-style comedy of manners, examining the ludicrousness of the class system; "Mother's Milk" is partly a fish-out-of-water story and partly a psychosexual intellectual drama; and "Mother's Milk" is a cold postmodern tragedy full of angst and unlooked-for self-discovery, dominated by metallics, greys, and blues.
The show's most salient theme is the idea that when you deeply hurt a child, when you damage a child's soul, the effects will continue to be felt for many years. As is alluded to throughout the first episode, and as becomes painfully clear in the second, when Patrick was a child, David began molesting him. Rather than depicting this, the show's most chilling scene is one in which Patrick comes to David's room, and there is a shot of the perfectly-made bed on which David sits. After Patrick leaves, however, there is a shot of the bed in disarray. We never see what happens, because we don't need to. This is as well-directed a bit of cinematic shorthand as you're ever likely to see. Horrific in its simplicity.
Another important theme is a mockery of the aristocracy. This is seen most clearly in the third episode, and especially in the odious character of Princess Margaret. The show depicts a decadent, toxic, emotionally calcified, and morally bankrupt class of people belonging to another age that have somehow lingered into modernity. Of course, this raises an obvious objection - "why should we care about Patrick?" Well, in part, we shouldn't. Essentially, this is the story of a spoiled rich kid. It's the very definition of white male privilege. And it never really manages to shake that. But there is more to it. For the themes, for the humour, for what it says about the British peerage, and, especially, for Cumberbatch's performance, this is certainly worth checking out. And despite the fact that we know Patrick is an obnoxious addict, there is enough humanity to ensure we remember the very real trauma beneath the bluster. And in that sense, it remains always compelling.
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I approached this series with high hopes because of Cumberbatch's oddball talent, but could only sit through the first episode. I've counseled a lot of addicts but never saw one as quirky as this role in his hands. Addicts are generally not so entertaining nor extreme. Reading ahead, I see scant potential for redemption here. The writers made much of the abuse of Cumberbatch's character by his dad, the nature of which was perfectly obvious long before its revelation. The gluttony of this waif-like man grew increasingly tedious with time. Also tedious was the faux NYC setting in which none of the actors even attempted a NYC accent -- they were almost all Brits to the bone, and how tedious is that? Addiction and abuse are worthy subjects, to be sure, but this dramedy did them scant justice.
Report
Production Company:
- Showtime Entertainment
- Sky
- Two Cities Television Ltd.
- Rachael Horovitz Productions
- SunnyMarch
- Little Island Productions
Initial Release Date: May 12, 2018
Number of seasons: 1 Season
Rating: TV-MA
Genres:
Awards
Golden Globes, USA
• 1 Nomination
Online Film & Television Association
• 6 Nominations
Primetime Emmy Awards
• 5 Nominations
