REVIEW #382 Eric (Season 1)

Vincent, a puppeteer on a famous kids show, falls into a vulnerable mental state after his son Edgar goes missing. Clinging to his sons ideas of a new puppet, he creates a plan to bring him home.

I think Eric explores mental health and addiction in a really interesting and creative way, using the trauma of a missing son to create this mental psychosis in which Vincent brings a puppet to life in his head. I enjoyed the approach and thought it was an innovative way to illustrate a broken mind. This was then combined with the corruption storyline, led by the character Detective Ledroit, which provided the hook to capture the audience even further. The final reveal was pretty surprising, especially surrounding the circumstances of Edgar’s disappearance but they were definitely not discrete at providing glaringly obvious clues pointing towards the corruption element of the show. For a six episode limited series, they did try to tackle an awful lot, from broken relationships, sexuality in the 80’s, corruption and what seemed like everything in between and although I think they handled the abundance of topics pretty well, they could have probably benefited from cutting one or two sub plots out to focus on the areas that mattered. The performances were strong across the entire cast and the overall aesthetic really immersed you into 1980’s New York, with the grain effect working well. It’s certainly nothing groundbreaking her, but for me, it was enjoyable and had me hooked from the get go.

Overall (7.8/10)

Thanks for reading.

Callan