- Network: SHOWTIME
- Series Premiere Date: May 12, 2018
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Critic Reviews
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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.
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The miniseries is an achievement on two fronts. For one thing, it’s the most remarkably faithful adaptation of a series of books in recent memory, capturing the tone and the aesthetic of the Melrose novels without sacrificing cohesion. But Patrick Melrose is also darkly entertaining, veering between young Patrick’s anguish and older Patrick’s episodes of situational comedy without diminishing either.
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Every vignette of upperclass life that revolves around Patrick’s journey is just as worthy of exploration as his own, and as the series delightfully (and sometimes devastatingly) dips in and out of their lives, it’s a privilege to be on the ride.
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Patrick Melrose is stamped throughout by Cumberbatch’s alternately furious and touching performance. But it takes a real despot to fuel his fires and shame, and Weaving is thoroughly up to commanding that role. Leigh likewise is a standout as Patrick’s cowed mother. ... Showtime in the end has a unique viewing experience, with some wit also in play amid the terrible consequences of being raised in a living hell.
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While we’ve certainly seen stories that satirize society’s upper class and upend their addiction to manners to great comic effect, this series hinges on a dazzling performance by Cumberbatch that reminds us why he’s become one of the internet’s most obsessive riddles of the past eight years.
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Cumberbatch’s performance is a standout--I fully expect him to earn an Emmy nomination--because its arc matches the arc of the show overall. Yes, the way he flings himself into insanity in the first episode is impressive. But it’s what he does in the third, when Patrick has become a more lucid man trying his damnedest to quell his id, that confirms he’s not just acting, thank you! He’s inhabiting a character engaged in the long, painful process of exhuming the parts of himself he’s been trying since boyhood to bury.
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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.
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With harrowing bravado and lacerating wit, Benedict Cumberbatch instills an aching vulnerable core to the tortured hero of Edward St. Aubyn's five-novel series, stylishly adapted by writer David Nicholls and director Edward Berger. [14 - 27 May 2018, p.11]
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Anchored by Cumberbatch’s performance, the miniseries is remarkably neither too long nor too short.
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Adapted by David Nicholls and directed by Edward Berger, it’s a loose grouping of story fragments that sit together beautifully, as they jump back and forth in time. The acting, too, helps to make Patrick Melrose more than a relentlessly bad trip. Cumberbatch is all in on his performance, and it’s riveting--definitely some of his finest work to date.
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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.
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Elegantly appalling. ... It’s Mr. Cumberbatch’s show, and he brings enormous intelligence, vulnerability and acerbic wit to Patrick. ... Mr. Cumberbatch is exceedingly fun to watch. And there’s a seductive allure to bad behavior. But Patrick Melrose also operates like a conflicted mind, camouflaging the awful with the beautiful.
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The brilliantly dark five-part limited series starring Benedict Cumberbatch is a compelling journey laced with pain and overflowing with absolutely riveting performances.
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Even as a heroin addict, Benedict Cumberbatch is riveting. ... With only the first two episodes available, and those being so different in tone and view--the second one harkens more to the nasty familial tensions and vicious verbal gymnastics of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”--it’s folly to guess how the others will unfold. Yet the pair deliver a solid promise that we are in for something very special.
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Two of five episodes is not ideal to judge where the miniseries ends up, but there's absolutely no denying that the writing, directing and especially Cumberbatch will make you want to return each week. For such a bleak story, that's quite an achievement.
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Brilliant performance by a great actor in a desperately grim story.
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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.
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Each book gets its own hour, which is little enough time to put a novel, even a short one, on-screen. And yet every episode feels eventful without seeming hurried. The compression does tend to make some thematic points obvious and some characters more overtly ridiculous or awful than they appear in the books, where St. Aubyn spends time in many different heads, and conversations spool out over pages.
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Suffice to say that Patrick Melrose is the Cumberbatch-iest thing the world has yet seen, which many will receive as wonderful news, while a few others (nonfans) might heed as a warning flare. ... Still, Cumberbatch’s all-in performance is a worthy reason to see it through--as are the performances from the supporting cast. Casual viewers, I suspect, might be surprised at how deeply they become invested in Patrick’s fate, hoping he can find some kind of the happiness that money cannot buy.
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At times, it’s still tough to watch. But Mr. Cumberbatch brings wit and flashes of wicked humor to a story of childhood trauma and its impact on one man’s life via substance abuse and mental illness.
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The series as a whole is not without its flaws, but it’s definitely worth watching for what Cumberbatch brings to it.
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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.
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In the way the episodes are presented, there's not necessarily a strong sense of momentum in Patrick's story. Thanks to Cumberbatch, it's nevertheless worth the investment watching him stumble along.
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Five hour-long episodes is certainly economical storytelling in this day and age, but that doesn’t stop Patrick Melrose from feeling like a little too much at times. The show does a tremendous job of capturing the raw helplessness of St. Aubyn’s prose, which resists pushing the vile acts of David Melrose and his companions into territory that feels disconnected from emotion. What’s lost, though, is the critique of wealth and privilege
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Under the guidance of Cumberbatch, who serves as executive producer, Nicholls’ translation is a surprisingly positive endeavour, combating the inherent bleakness and social commentary of Aubyn’s stern prose with black comedy and an unceasing desire to better one’s self. ... There’s just too much to unpack in a mere handful of hours--simply put.
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Onscreen, Cumberbatch (playing scenes directed by Edward Berger and written by David Nicholls) compellingly froths, hops, and slithers with junk sickness, giggles with mania, nods off, twitches on, and writhes in revulsion. But the actor’s dazzle distracts from the character’s grotesque situation rather than illuminating it. The part is a showcase, and the performance is showy; it left me acutely aware of watching something extremely actorly.
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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.
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By condensing each book into one-hour installments, Melrose must transverse some daunting narrative gaps, which makes the episodes feel choppy, and robs the larger moments.
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Although most of the characters are horrible people, there are some great performances. Just expect your enthusiasm for this series to be tempered by its challenging content.
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Mr. Berger (“Deutschland ’83”) and his cinematographer, James Friend, package all this in a glossy, fluid that makes the bare bones of Patrick’s story entertaining, if not terribly compelling. Patrick Melrose might be better viewing if you haven’t read the books and aren’t aware of what you’re missing. And of course there’s the consolation of watching Mr. Cumberbatch exercise his peerless technique.
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Some tonal adjustments may have gotten Patrick Melrose off to a better start. Right now it feels like an overdose.
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Unless you have a mysterious fascination with ravaged children or junkies coming apart at the seams, this show is best avoided.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 98 out of 169
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Mixed: 12 out of 169
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Negative: 59 out of 169
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May 13, 2018
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May 13, 2018
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May 13, 2018