Benedict Cumberbatch has a new mystery on his hands. 

The Oscar nominee stars in the six-episode limited series Eric available to stream on Netflix now. Created by BAFTA and Emmy Award winner Abi Morgan (The Hour, The Iron Lady, The Split), the thriller follows a desperate father as he battles his demons on the vibrant, dangerous, and intoxicating streets of ’80s New York in a race to bring home his missing son.

“This is a story about people finding their home,” said Cumberbatch. “Whether it’s a child, a homeless person, a gay Black cop, a wife in an unhappy marriage, or even Eric on the show, it’s all about finding a place.”

What is Eric about?

Vincent (Cumberbatch) is one of New York’s leading puppeteers and creator of the hugely popular children’s television show Good Day Sunshine. But his life unravels when his 9-year-old son goes missing on the way to school. “Eric is a dark and crazy journey into the heart of ’80s New York — and the good, bad, and ugly world of Vincent,” Morgan told Netflix. 

Struggling to cope with the loss of his son, Edgar, Vincent becomes increasingly distressed and volatile. Full of self-loathing and guilt over Edgar’s disappearance, he clings to his son’s drawings of a blue monster puppet, Eric, convinced that if he can get Eric on TV, then Edgar will come home. As Vincent’s progressively destructive behavior 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.

“When I pitched the idea of a New York puppeteer on a quest to find his missing son, with a seven-foot-tall blue monster in tow, it’s to Netflix’s eternal credit that they jumped on board,” Morgan tells Tudum. “Eric is a deep dive into the ’80s Big Apple, grappling with rising crime rates, internal corruption, endemic racism, a forgotten underclass, and the AIDS epidemic, exposing the divisions rife between parents searching for their child, a detective battling with a system that is broken, and a lost boy who may never come home — and asks where the real monsters lie. With puppets … lots of puppets.”

Who is in the Eric cast?

Benedict Cumberbatch

as Vincent

About the Character

One of New York’s leading puppet makers and puppeteers, Vincent is the creator of the wildly popular children’s television show, Good Day Sunshine. Highly intelligent, charismatic yet narcissistic, Vincent is professionally volatile and privately neglectful of his wife, Cassie, and young son, Edgar. As we find Vincent at a tipping point in the beginning of the series, Benedict Cumberbatch viewed Vincent’s journey as a “huge odyssey to go on in six episodes.”

 

Also an executive producer on the project, Cumberbatch saw Vincent as someone who turned to his work on Good Day Sunshine to find salvation for an unhappy childhood and “pretty loveless” upbringing. “He starts to bring home his vanity, his idiosyncrasies, his ego, and all kinds of toxic behavior, which affects how he overlooks his kid and how abrasive he is in a marriage which has [already] had 10 years of pretty tumultuous moments of infidelity, arguing, and disconnection,” said Cumberbatch.

 

When Vincent’s child goes missing, “there’s this split between reality and Vincent’s reality,” he said. “He’s trying to hold on to both things to steer him back towards his son.” As he hallucinates Edgar’s drawings of Eric into existence to help him find his son, Vincent’s mental health deteriorates.

 

Morgan said the character is “aggressive. He’s rude. He’s funny, he’s very irreverent, and Benedict’s performance gives you that.” Before Morgan met Cumberbatch, she felt like she knew him from watching him as Sherlock and Patrick Melrose. “He has this incredible material talent,” she said. 

 

But it was important for director Lucy Forbes that Cumberbatch didn’t look like himself or feel reminiscent of his past roles. “That’s why his hair is grown out, he’s got a beard, and we put glasses on him,” said Forbes. “Not only for the time period, but also to make him feel like Vincent as much as possible.”

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McKinley Belcher III

as Detective Michael Ledroit

About the Character

With 20 years in the police service under his belt (primarily spent in Vice), Ledroit has been a leading detective in Missing Persons ever since he felt compelled to pitch in and help the swamped division. “A question I ask myself in life sometimes is, ‘How do you position yourself so that you can be the change that you want to see in the world?’ That’s a real question for him throughout this series,” said Belcher of his character. 
 

For Belcher, Ledroit’s journey is about stepping into his power and not accepting what everyone else says is true. In doing so, he’s “challenging the norm and holding the NYPD, the system, and the people at large to a higher standard,” he said. “There’s a whole lot of power in deciding to act, standing on your own two feet and saying ‘No.’ ”

 

Ledroit also works daily to hide his sexuality and his life with long-term lover William (Mark Gillis). But when his secret becomes an obstacle at work, Ledroit must choose between protecting his identity and solving a case. As Eric takes place during the onset of the AIDS and HIV crisis, “the solace that many people took in being able to explore themselves and their partner or partners, sexually, romantically, and intimately, had been invaded,” said Belcher. “Having lost [Lux nightclub owner] Gator (Wade Allain-Marcus) as his first love … William is the next person that he has met and may be the only person he not only feels completely safe with, but with whom he’s created a bubble of safety and security where they can both be.”

 

Cumberbatch commended Belcher’s “Sidney Poitier level” of screen presence. “Shots of him walking towards the Lux, he just holds the screen in silence like all great film actors do,” he said.

 

As a writer, Morgan also found Belcher’s presence compelling. “He’s the thriller metronome that keeps the drive and the purpose of the show going,” she said. “In fact, I found myself writing more and more as the show went on. We started to see what was being shot and I made adjustments, because he was just so damn good!”

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Gaby Hoffmann

as Cassie

About the Character

Born and raised in privilege on a farm in upstate New York, Cassie fell in love with Vincent at art college before the reality of life kicked in. “They met when they were quite young and both had real ambition and a true, passionate love for one another,” said Gaby Hoffmann. “They dove into life fully as artists, as lovers, [and] as parents.” 

 

Cassie is a warm and loving mother to Edgar, but struggles with Vincent, tired of his volatile behavior. “Where I understand Cassie to be when we first meet her is somebody who has let herself become trapped in a life that is ultimately not serving her because she thinks it’s what’s best for her son,” she said. “It’s terrifying to leave a marriage and a nuclear family life, but she is screaming to get out of it.”

 

In almost every scene of Cassie’s, Hoffmann saw a little bit of movement towards herself and away from Vincent. “She’s in a moment of real confusion, desperation, and searching,” she said. “Cassie is not being true to herself and that is very disruptive. Also, as we see and as is always true, the child absorbs it all, so what is a very beautiful family needs to transform into a different iteration. Through this event [Edgar’s disappearance], that’s what happens.”
 

A fan of Hoffmann’s since her turn in Sleepless in Seattle, Morgan praised the actor as “very instinctive, intuitive, and raw, which is what you need for Cassie,” she said. “You need a woman who’s taking herself to the parameters of her own sanity and is still very driven to get her son back.” Cumberbatch compared working with Hoffmann to feeling “like you’ve got truth serum in front of you. You can’t muck around with it. You can’t fake it. If it doesn’t feel right, it’s not right,” he said. 

 

Hoffmann is a New York City native and grew up there in the ’80s, when the series is set. As the series partly filmed on the streets of the Big Apple, Claire Danes came on set to visit one day, because she’s friends with Hoffmann.

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Dan Fogler

as Lennie

About the Character

Lennie Wilson is Vincent’s best friend and colleague, and a brilliant puppeteer and maker in his own right. A committed bachelor, Lennie shares a strong bond with Edgar, who often comes to the workshop of Good Day Sunshine. 

 

Morgan was an admirer of Fogler’s work as Francis Ford Coppola in The Offer, finding him physically humorous. “He’s a very quiet, funny stooge next to Vincent,” she said. “Yet I think some of his scenes in Eric are the most heartbreaking in the entire show.”

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Ivan Howe

as Edgar

About the Character

Artistic yet deeply withdrawn from the world, 9-year-old Edgar is inspired by the puppets on his father’s show Good Day Sunshine, a hit children’s puppet show. He wants to make a puppet of his own. 

 

Howe was “just adorable,” said Cumberbatch of his on-screen son. “I felt protective towards him, loving towards him, but also marveled at how the camera just ate up how natural he was and how effective he was.” 

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Bamar Kane

as Yuusuf

About the Character

A compassionate and friendly man who lives in the tunnels underneath the city, Edgar takes a shine to him and, in particular, his graffiti tag.

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Clarke Peters

as George Lovett

About the Character

George Lovett, the superintendent of the apartment building where Edgar lives, is a friendly neighbor with minimal belongings. Those he has, he treasures. While his children no longer speak to him, George befriended Edgar, letting him play in his apartment whenever his parents argued. Cumberbatch loves Peters “to bits,” he said. “We’ve worked together before and we do a lot of Letters Live together, so I’m terribly fond of saying we’ve got a long-standing relationship.” 

 

Belcher also worked previously with Peters. In 2017, they performed in a play together at Lincoln Center called The Royale, which was based on the boxer Jack Johnson. “I’ve known Clarke a long time, but I did not realize he was going to be on the show until I arrived in Budapest [where the series primarily filmed],” said Belcher. “I couldn’t have been more thrilled that I got to dive in with him. He’s one of my favorite people and there’s a beautiful gravitas and grounded-ness to what he brings. I just love his energy.”

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Can I watch the Eric trailer?

Yes, you can check out Cumberbatch, Hoffmann, and Belcher III in action above. Set to a sinister version of ABBA’s “S.O.S.,” Cumberbatch and Hoffmann play parents in a desperate search to find their missing child. As Cumberbatch’s Vincent is a puppeteer in a children’s show, he thinks that creating a puppet inspired by his son’s drawings will be a beacon guiding him back to where he belongs. “If I can get him on the show, then Edgar will see him,” he says in the trailer. “He’ll know how much we want him to come home.” Join Detective Ledroit’s team in the search for Edgar, and “let’s go find that f***ing kid!”

Can I see some photos of the cast and the character Eric?

Absolutely. Click through the gallery above.

Who is the creative team behind Eric?

Lucy Forbes (This Is Going To Hurt, The End of the F***ing World) directs the series. Morgan, Cumberbatch, and Forbes executive produce alongside Jane Featherstone (Chernobyl, This Is Going to Hurt) and Lucy Dyke (The Split, Black Mirror), with Holly Pullinger (This Is Going to Hurt, Don’t Forget the Driver) producing. Eric is produced by Sister (Chernobyl, This Is Going to Hurt, Landscapers) and co-produced by Little Chick (The Split). 

“When Abi first pitched Eric to us, it gave us goose bumps,” said Featherstone and Dyke. “It’s an extraordinary piece of writing, inspired by Abi’s experience of New York in the mid-’80s, a city rotten to its core but on the cusp of change.”

At the heart of Eric, Morgan sees “the collision of the things that we both love and that we’re terrified of,” she says. “It’s always about where the monsters are.” On one hand, there’s Eric the puppet, which came from Vincent’s son’s mind and has, in many ways, been “nurtured from all the characteristics that this child has seen in his own father.” On the other hand, there’s also New York City “having to look at its own monsters.”

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Is Eric inspired by Sesame Street?

Morgan’s idea for the children’s puppet show that would become Eric’s Good Day Sunshine came to her when she lived in New York in 1987. She was working as a nanny with a family whose apartment was across from where a TV show would film; she liked that the studio was in the middle of a street, with its own little bubble and defined parameters in front of and behind the camera. In that way, it’s a “nod to Sesame Street,” but it’s really “meant to show the absurdity and yet obvious rivalry that goes on in those worlds, how seriously it’s taken, but also that these kids’ shows are a Trojan horse for so much more,” Morgan said. “They’re messaging and educating our children and that’s an incredibly powerful tool, yet the people behind them aren’t always as mentally, physically, or emotionally as stable as you would expect them to be.”

Morgan loves how Good Day Sunshine creators Vincent and Lennie are “these screwed-up guys, but there’s still a purity in what they’re trying to achieve. They still believe in trying to tell these stories and are deeply committed,” she said. Vincent, especially, is an adult with a childlike part of him still intact, so he “connects with what Edgar has drawn, and then can bring this puppet to life.”

Becky Johnson and Paul Vincett of Stitches and Glue (creature supervisors who have previously worked on Star Wars: The Last Jedi, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and Stranger Things: The First Shadow) not only designed the Eric creature for the series, but also all of the puppets in Good Day Sunshine. “You can’t not make a puppet without some kind of connotations to Sesame Street stuff,” says Vincett. “But the look of the characters was trying to be as far away as we could make it.” Since the beginning of the design process, they were mindful of potential copyright issues. Their approach was to use materials that were time appropriate to the ’80s, but “the general look is still very much unique,” says Vincett. “Some of the characters are really stripped back.” Adds Johnson, “And a bit more humanoid.”

Johnson notes that the Good Day Sunshine puppets “had a lot of accessories as well, with clothing and special hats.” For Lennie’s puppet, Office Charlie, they took a real shirt from the time, copied it, and made a pattern out of it. Bug wears glasses, while Mush has no eyes whatsoever — “which I love,” says Johnson. “They’re hidden under his big hair,” says Vincett. As an homage to director Lucy Forbes, they sourced Forbes tartan to make Mack the Mole’s special beret. “That poor puppet. We loved making it. It was so fun. But he gets treated so badly!” jokes Johnson. She also praises Cumberbatch’s ability to go straight into a Scottish accent for the character on set. “We were like, ‘Oh my goodness! Wow. Yeah, I see why you’re so successful.’ ”

But some of their favorites were actually the singing pretzel and hot dog puppets at the hot dog stand. “Lucy’s imagination! The hot dogs are like this little mariachi band,” says Johnson. They were all flocked (where you statically charge hairs so they stand on end) so they have a little bit of fuzz on them, an old-school technique. “Material-wise, we referenced the time period as much as possible,” says Vincett. 

To train the actors playing puppeteers on set, Eric also brought on Raymond Carr, a filmmaker, theatrical director, designer, and puppeteer who served as puppet captain. “Fundamentally, we were trying to re-create public broadcasting children’s television and that’s a little different in [the US] and the UK,” he said. He first started training the cast over Zoom before filming began and would give them exercises with practice puppets to develop muscle memory, particularly with lip syncing. “Being able to open and close the [puppet’s] mouth on every syllable, that’s a thing that you have to ingrain into your brain so that everything else you do that’s added to that will come as second nature,” he explained. 

Carr later rehearsed with the actors to help them find their puppet’s unique character and a “sustainable” voice that they could maintain throughout the shoot. He also taught them how to navigate the in-world set and perform with puppets. “They’re on these rolling stools and carts and having to be super close to each other, lean on each other at certain times,” he recalled. “The physicality of it was a hurdle for some of the performers, but they were all game to try.”

Since most of the actors had no puppeteering experience, actual puppeteers would be their doubles in scenes where you only see the puppets on-screen. “It was a real learning curve for the actors,” says Vincett. They praise Fogler for commanding Officer Charlie, the “hardest puppet out there,” says Johnson. 

For any puppet show, holding up your arm for ages is really hard. “We just finished a project, and a puppeteer said that, ‘Puppeteering is pain’ because your body doesn’t take to it naturally,” says Vincett. But they both insist that Lennie’s line in Eric –– “Puppets can say the things we can’t” –– couldn’t be more true. “I mean, what I’ve seen puppeteers say through their puppet …” jokes Vincett. Johnson says they are very funny people and can be caustic. “They’re very, very quick.” Sounds like a certain founder of Good Day Sunshine, no?

Who wrote Eric’s Good Day Sunshine theme song?

“Be good. Be kind. Be brave. Be different!” At the end of every Good Day Sunshine episode in Eric, the show ends with a theme song, written by Tim Minchin. Co-music supervisor Danny Layton praises Minchin for writing “this amazing interpretation of Abi [Morgan]’s vision,” he says. You can listen to the song below. 

“[Good Day Sunshine] is a show that had been running for a decade,” says Layton. “So it comes out of the ’70s.” Morgan and Forbes encouraged Layton and co-music supervisor Ross Sellwood to think about the session players Lennie and Vincent would have tapped to be in the band for the show. “We sent photos of who it would be. I think it was Boston-Manhattan transfer friends of his from college, stuff like that,” says Layton. “Those kind of great session players, but a bit like geeky college guys.” 

Layton and Sellwood ultimately grounded their song selections for Eric in the music of 1985. They looked up radio station playlists in New York at the time, and referenced DJ Larry Levan’s set lists from when he’d played at the Paradise Garage as inspiration for the music played at The Lux nightclub in the series. “Lucy [Forbes] stuck to this: If you walked into the club at this time, at that time of night, we’re going to hear stuff they would’ve heard,” says Sellwood. “We’re not going to hear stuff that you recognize.” Well, that excludes Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” which Vincent dances to with Eric at the end of Episode 3. “Obviously everybody will know [that one],” laughs Layton. “It has more impact. It’s hyperreal.”

The music supervisors also thought about what records people would have in their home collections. “A lot of these are almost biographical songs for characters,” says Sellwood. Forbes tells Tudum that “music is the starting point for every job I do.” She even made playlists for cast members to help them get into the groove. “It’s really helpful for character development,” she says. “Songs can give you so much in terms of stuff you want to say about a character that’s hard to articulate. It can give a feeling so easily.” She and Hoffmann, in particular, would send each other music before filming began. 

Hoffmann listened to a lot of Joan Armatrading, and in Episode 3, Cassie dances to Armatrading’s “Love and Affection” the first time she’s alone in her apartment. “That came off the back of us sharing that music,” says Forbes. “We had a bit of time at the end of the day, and I was like, ‘You know what? Let’s just put the song on. Dance around and let yourself go.’ ” Forbes wanted to see the more human side of Cassie. Yes, she’s upset, but “sometimes you get drunk and dance around a house and that makes it more interesting. She literally did it twice. It made us all cry.”

What is the Eric release date?

Ready to see who’s really pulling the puppet strings? Eric premieres on May 30, only on Netflix.

Additional reporting by Drew Tewksbury.