Eric sure looks like the spiritual successor to the eerie and brilliant movie The Black Phone.  Eric is the next British six-part limited series, and it hails from the mind of The Hour writer Abi Morgan.  Sometimes it seems like every new series out of England is about a lost or missing kid.  Everything from The Five to Thirteen to Broadchurch, and The Missing to The Bay–British TV creators think missing kid tales are what audiences want more of.  It’s the subject of Netflix’s Eric, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Gaby Hoffman, parents of the missing kid who are struggling with the investigation and the loss.

Eric isn’t the missing kid, he’s a monster the son–Edgar–drew pictures of before he went missing.  But this is where The Black Phone and maybe even Five Nights at Freddy’s or Donnie Darko comes into play.  The Black Phone followed a brother and sister visited by ghosts as they try to solve who is kidnapping and killing kids in a small town in the 1970s.  Is the father just using the monster to cope or is there something darker at play?

Take a look at this trailer for the Netflix series, Eric:

ABBA’s S.O.S. in the background is an interesting choice.

Cumberbatch never fails to disappoint.  This time he plays a distressed puppeteer.  Field of Dreams and Uncle Buck co-star Hoffman has been acting in shows from the Freaky Friday remake to Homeland to the Veronica Mars movie, but this seems like a bigger role for her–it’s about time we saw her in something like this.

This looks sufficiently creepy, like it should make a decent movie, but a six-hour series?  It will all depend how it ends, right?

Mapplethorpe’s McKinley Belcher II plays a detective, with John Doman in a supporting role.  Look for Eric streaming on Netflix beginning May 30, 2024–if you dare.

C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg