Eric

Award-winning series creator Abi Morgan (“The Split”) and director Lucy Forbes (“This Is Going to Hurt”) bring their knack for authentic, ambidextrous storytelling to the table. The period details couldn’t be better, and the final episode weaves the many elements together with effortless poignancy.

It might be set in a bygone New York City, but Morgan’s writing gives the series a distinctly British sensibility – slightly eccentric, dark in all the right moments and an ultimately hopeful tale of redemption.

Both Mr. Cumberbatch and Mr. Belcher have moments of enormous power, though much of it is front-loaded: The program gets increasingly silly during some of the later sequences, though the introduction of madness into a story allows it to get away with much more than if everyone were solidly sane. .... It is Cassie who maintains the core of grief at the center of "Eric." As a parent, I found her heartbreaking.

Eric packs a punch right where it hurts in the most thought-provoking of ways. It's brave and forthright in the themes it explores and hey, the inclusion of a puppet may stump many at first but it truly makes it a one-of-a-kind series.

It’s inventive, assured and far less weird than you expect.

Monsters real and imagined are confronted in an ambitious undertaking that successfully balances true-crime realism with child-like awe and wonder. More of this please, Netflix.

Eric doesn't have much we haven't seen before, but it's put together in a unique enough way to be compelling. The performances are strong, the visual identity is appealing, and the lack of humor in a show about a guy hallucinating a puppet is genuinely inspired.

Weird, dark but compulsively watchable.

Eric doesn’t sustain its momentum but it still boasts sufficient tension, heightened emotions, and some great performances. .... So while Eric isn’t perfect, its melancholy, sense of place, and general weirdness make it definitely worth your while.

There’s a lot to love in Eric, a show in which the whole cast and crew are dedicated to creating something unique. Sadly, all this effort is often hampered by how the series leading star, Cumberbatch, is stuck in a story loop that gets in the way of everything else.

In the end, Morgan and her collaborators (including director Lucy Forbes) are probably trying to squeeze too many concepts and tones into six episodes. But the ideas behind Eric — both the Netflix show and the cranky puppet within it — are intriguing enough, and most of the execution effective enough, that it’s always interesting, even when it’s messy.

The core mystery in “Eric” is revealed too early, but the penultimate episode is riveting enough to bring you back into the fold.