Benedict Cumberbatch goes to infinite lengths in Netflix’s upcoming ‘Eric’

In the new Netflix limited series Eric, Benedict Cumberbatch plays a father who would stop at nothing to get his son home.

Eric, which is set in 1980s New York, tells the tale of Cumberbatch’s Vincent and Gaby Hoffmann’s Cassie as they look for their son Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe), who goes missing. To Cassie’s dismay, Vincent uses his job as a puppeteer for children’s television to look for his lost son.

Vincent decides to bring the monster to life while the police carry out their search and rescue while using one of his son’s sketches of Eric, a potential monster puppet for Vincent’s television show, Good Day Sunshine. In an attempt to get his son to come home, Dad gets obsessed with bringing Eric from the page to the screen.

In a moment of desperation and angst, Vincent tells Cassie, “If we can get [Eric] on the show, then Edgar will see him and know how much we want him to come home.”

“You’re going crazy,” Cassie replies.

As he continues to “struggle to cope with the loss of his son,” Vincent becomes “increasingly distressed and volatile,” per the series’ logline. “As Vincent’s progressively destructive behaviour alienates his family, his work colleagues, and the detectives trying to help him, it’s Eric, a delusion of necessity, who becomes his only ally in the pursuit to bring his son home.”

Along with Cumberbatch, Hoffmann, and Howe, the series features McKinley Belcher III, Dan Fogler, and Clarke Peters. Abi Morgan, known for her work on Chernobyl and The Iron Lady, created, wrote, and produced the series.

The limited series will land on Netflix on May 30.