Directed by Edward Berger, and written for the screen by David Nicholls, this five-part miniseries is based on the semi-autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St. Aubyn, published between 1992 and 2011.
Each of the episodes is based on a single novel, with each set in a different year. In the first episode, "Bad News (2018)" (set in 1982, and actually the second novel in the series), Patrick (Benedict Cumberbatch), in the midst of a debilitating heroin addiction, receives word that his sybaritic father, David (a truly terrifying Hugo Weaving), has died in New York, and Patrick must collect the body. In "Never Mind (2018)" (the first novel in the sequence), as Patrick goes through heroin withdrawal upon returning from New York, he thinks back to 1967 and his time on holidays in the family's French villa and the first day that David raped him. In "Some Hope (2018)" (set in 1990), Patrick, now clean, reluctantly attends a banquet for Princess Margaret (Harriet Walter). In "Mother's Milk (2018)" (set in 2003), Patrick, now sober for several years, and working as a barrister, visits the villa with his family. His mother, Eleanor (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is extremely sick, having suffered a stroke, and Patrick is shocked to learn that she wants to change her will, leaving the villa to Seamus Dourke (Jonjo O'Neill), a New Age guru whom Patrick believes is manipulating her. The stress results in Patrick drinking heavily. In "At Last (2018)" (set in 2005), Patrick's drinking has spiralled out of control following the dissolution of his marriage.
The show wastes no time in establishing straight out of the gate how severe Patrick's addictions are. In the opening scene of the first episode, he answers a telephone, to learn that his father has died. However, it's immediately apparent that something isn't right with the scene, with Patrick looking and talking as if he is slightly out of sync with everything else. Struggling to keep himself upright, he sways, droops, seems about to fall asleep, all the while holding the receiver in his hand. Then he bends over. Is he consumed with grief? No, he's just spotted a syringe on the ground, and he wants to shoot up. Upon hanging up the phone, he then stares at the syringe, and his eyes come into focus for the first time. It's a stark introduction to the character, immediately establishing where his priorities lie at this point in his life and indicating the hold drugs have on him.
Within this episode, an unusual stylistic device is used to draw us into Patrick's interiority. As he's getting higher and higher, he begins to employ more and more voices, carrying on a dialogue between them, but not in the sense that he speaks aloud in one voice and then answers aloud in another. Instead, the show uses voice-over, with some of the conversation delivered as standard dialogue, spoken out loud by Cumberbatch, and the rest coming from within Patrick's head, so that only the audience and Patrick himself can hear it. This sense of subjectivity is enhanced even further via a plethora of visual techniques. For example, unnatural lighting changes correspond to his mood and glitches in the actual picture of the show itself happen in sync with his psychotic breaks. Most of these techniques are confined to the first episode, but the most prevalent is a technique that's used many times across the five - the bleeding of the past into the present. So, for example, Patrick remembering David shouting at him in the past will jerk awake in the present; a room in the present will remind him of a room in the past, and suddenly he'll be there; a lizard walking on the wall when he was first raped by David is a recurring motif throughout the show; he opens a door in 1982, and we suddenly cut to him standing in an open doorway in 1967.
Whilst the first episode may be the most formally inventive, this is not to say the others are aesthetically uninteresting. Each one is grounded in a different genre, adopting the appropriate tone for that genre, and featuring a vastly different colour palette from the others. "Bad News" is a yuppie version of Trainspotting (1996), a dark night of the soul awash in non-diegetic purples and greens, where the formal chaos mirrors the breakdown of Patrick's mind; "Never Mind" is a lurid, lazy summer retreat, similar in design to something like Call Me by Your Name (2017), with a preponderance of deep yellows and reds, except, of course, the sensuousness of the imagery is here employed ironically; "Some Hope" is an Upstairs, Downstairs (1971)/Gosford Park (2001)-style comedy of manners, examining the ludicrousness of the class system, limiting the palette to mainly binary colours such as white and black; "Mother's Milk" (the only episode set over the course of several days) is partly a fish-out-of-water story and partly a psychosexual intellectual drama, wherein Patrick finds that although the French villa has lost its most hated figure, it still has the power to disturb; and "Mother's Milk" is a cold postmodern tragedy full of angst and unlooked-for self-discovery, dominated by metallics, greys, and blues. What Berger manages to pull off across these five hours is to force this compendium of different styles, themes, and tones into something resembling a cohesive artistic statement.
When it's not working to try to convey Patrick's subjectivity, the show deals with a number of themes; the ridiculousness of British royalty, the poisonous nature of the aristocracy, the corrupting power of wealth, the illogical importance of class, the unreality of the public school system, the cyclical nature of bad parenting, unfulfilled and/or thwarted ambition, depression, sexual abuse, and stoicism in the face of any ill (stiff-upper-lipped Britishness and all). However, perhaps the most salient theme is the idea that when you deeply hurt a child, when you do something to damage a child's very soul, the effects will continue to be felt by any who come into contact with that child for many years after the fact.
As is alluded to throughout the first episode, and as becomes painfully clear in the second, when he was a child, Patrick was completely at the mercy of an utter monster. After calling young Patrick to his room, ostensibly to tell him the story of King Shaka, but actually to rape him, David explains, speaking of Shaka's treatment of his soldiers, "what had felt like cruelty at the time was actually a gift. It was actually love. I don't expect you to thank me now, but I hope perhaps when you're older, you'll be grateful for the skill of detachment that I've instilled." Indeed, this scene is most chilling in what it doesn't show. When Patrick first comes to David's room, there is a shot of the perfectly-made bed on which David sits. After Patrick leaves the room, however, there is a shot of the bed in disarray. We never see what happens, because we don't need to. This is as well-directed a bit of cinematic shorthand as you're ever likely to see. Horrific in its simplicity.
For all this childhood trauma, however, the editing on occasion suggests, especially in episode four, that Patrick is turning into just as bad a parent as David (molestation aside). Seeing Patrick standing on the same balcony that David once used to lord it over his staff and family may not be particularly subtle, but it is effective. Indeed, this is the same balcony where David's sadistic power games were first revealed to the audience - spotting a maid precariously carrying a tray laden with china, David calls her, forcing her to stop, tray in hand. The longer he leaves her standing, the more difficult it becomes for her to hold the tray, and the more the china clinks, all the while he stares down at her, grinning, saying nothing, revelling in the power he holds over her.
Another important theme is a mockery of the aristocracy. This is seen most clearly in the third episode, and especially in the odious character of Princess Margaret. However, the theme is present throughout all five episodes in one shape or another. In "Never Mind", for example, the Melrose family and their circle of friends are shown to be humourless, vainglorious prigs. The show depicts a decadent, toxic, emotionally calcified, and morally bankrupt class of people belonging to another age, that has somehow lingered into modernity and is desperately holding on to its outdated traditions.
Of course, this also raises perhaps one of the most obvious objections to the show - "why should we care?" Well, in part, we shouldn't. Essentially, this is the story of a spoiled rich kid. It's the very definition of white male privilege, which isn't exactly a very sympathetic theme at the moment. And it never really manages to shake that identifying characteristic. But there is more to it than that. The narrative may not be especially interesting, focusing more on isolated anecdotal-type incidents rather than a classic cause-and-effect plot, but for the themes, for the humour, for what it says about the British peerage, and, especially, for Cumberbatch's performance, this is certainly worth checking out. True, so dominant is his work that on more than one occasion, it effectively turns into a one-man play, meaning if you're not a Cumberbatch fan, you definitely won't enjoy it. In that sense, he dominates proceedings too much. But despite the fact that we know Patrick is an obnoxious addict, there is enough humanity to ensure we remember the very real trauma beneath the bluster. And in that sense, it remains always compelling - brilliantly acted, and with a lot to say about a myriad of issues.
Each of the episodes is based on a single novel, with each set in a different year. In the first episode, "Bad News (2018)" (set in 1982, and actually the second novel in the series), Patrick (Benedict Cumberbatch), in the midst of a debilitating heroin addiction, receives word that his sybaritic father, David (a truly terrifying Hugo Weaving), has died in New York, and Patrick must collect the body. In "Never Mind (2018)" (the first novel in the sequence), as Patrick goes through heroin withdrawal upon returning from New York, he thinks back to 1967 and his time on holidays in the family's French villa and the first day that David raped him. In "Some Hope (2018)" (set in 1990), Patrick, now clean, reluctantly attends a banquet for Princess Margaret (Harriet Walter). In "Mother's Milk (2018)" (set in 2003), Patrick, now sober for several years, and working as a barrister, visits the villa with his family. His mother, Eleanor (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is extremely sick, having suffered a stroke, and Patrick is shocked to learn that she wants to change her will, leaving the villa to Seamus Dourke (Jonjo O'Neill), a New Age guru whom Patrick believes is manipulating her. The stress results in Patrick drinking heavily. In "At Last (2018)" (set in 2005), Patrick's drinking has spiralled out of control following the dissolution of his marriage.
The show wastes no time in establishing straight out of the gate how severe Patrick's addictions are. In the opening scene of the first episode, he answers a telephone, to learn that his father has died. However, it's immediately apparent that something isn't right with the scene, with Patrick looking and talking as if he is slightly out of sync with everything else. Struggling to keep himself upright, he sways, droops, seems about to fall asleep, all the while holding the receiver in his hand. Then he bends over. Is he consumed with grief? No, he's just spotted a syringe on the ground, and he wants to shoot up. Upon hanging up the phone, he then stares at the syringe, and his eyes come into focus for the first time. It's a stark introduction to the character, immediately establishing where his priorities lie at this point in his life and indicating the hold drugs have on him.
Within this episode, an unusual stylistic device is used to draw us into Patrick's interiority. As he's getting higher and higher, he begins to employ more and more voices, carrying on a dialogue between them, but not in the sense that he speaks aloud in one voice and then answers aloud in another. Instead, the show uses voice-over, with some of the conversation delivered as standard dialogue, spoken out loud by Cumberbatch, and the rest coming from within Patrick's head, so that only the audience and Patrick himself can hear it. This sense of subjectivity is enhanced even further via a plethora of visual techniques. For example, unnatural lighting changes correspond to his mood and glitches in the actual picture of the show itself happen in sync with his psychotic breaks. Most of these techniques are confined to the first episode, but the most prevalent is a technique that's used many times across the five - the bleeding of the past into the present. So, for example, Patrick remembering David shouting at him in the past will jerk awake in the present; a room in the present will remind him of a room in the past, and suddenly he'll be there; a lizard walking on the wall when he was first raped by David is a recurring motif throughout the show; he opens a door in 1982, and we suddenly cut to him standing in an open doorway in 1967.
Whilst the first episode may be the most formally inventive, this is not to say the others are aesthetically uninteresting. Each one is grounded in a different genre, adopting the appropriate tone for that genre, and featuring a vastly different colour palette from the others. "Bad News" is a yuppie version of Trainspotting (1996), a dark night of the soul awash in non-diegetic purples and greens, where the formal chaos mirrors the breakdown of Patrick's mind; "Never Mind" is a lurid, lazy summer retreat, similar in design to something like Call Me by Your Name (2017), with a preponderance of deep yellows and reds, except, of course, the sensuousness of the imagery is here employed ironically; "Some Hope" is an Upstairs, Downstairs (1971)/Gosford Park (2001)-style comedy of manners, examining the ludicrousness of the class system, limiting the palette to mainly binary colours such as white and black; "Mother's Milk" (the only episode set over the course of several days) is partly a fish-out-of-water story and partly a psychosexual intellectual drama, wherein Patrick finds that although the French villa has lost its most hated figure, it still has the power to disturb; and "Mother's Milk" is a cold postmodern tragedy full of angst and unlooked-for self-discovery, dominated by metallics, greys, and blues. What Berger manages to pull off across these five hours is to force this compendium of different styles, themes, and tones into something resembling a cohesive artistic statement.
When it's not working to try to convey Patrick's subjectivity, the show deals with a number of themes; the ridiculousness of British royalty, the poisonous nature of the aristocracy, the corrupting power of wealth, the illogical importance of class, the unreality of the public school system, the cyclical nature of bad parenting, unfulfilled and/or thwarted ambition, depression, sexual abuse, and stoicism in the face of any ill (stiff-upper-lipped Britishness and all). However, perhaps the most salient theme is the idea that when you deeply hurt a child, when you do something to damage a child's very soul, the effects will continue to be felt by any who come into contact with that child for many years after the fact.
As is alluded to throughout the first episode, and as becomes painfully clear in the second, when he was a child, Patrick was completely at the mercy of an utter monster. After calling young Patrick to his room, ostensibly to tell him the story of King Shaka, but actually to rape him, David explains, speaking of Shaka's treatment of his soldiers, "what had felt like cruelty at the time was actually a gift. It was actually love. I don't expect you to thank me now, but I hope perhaps when you're older, you'll be grateful for the skill of detachment that I've instilled." Indeed, this scene is most chilling in what it doesn't show. When Patrick first comes to David's room, there is a shot of the perfectly-made bed on which David sits. After Patrick leaves the room, however, there is a shot of the bed in disarray. We never see what happens, because we don't need to. This is as well-directed a bit of cinematic shorthand as you're ever likely to see. Horrific in its simplicity.
For all this childhood trauma, however, the editing on occasion suggests, especially in episode four, that Patrick is turning into just as bad a parent as David (molestation aside). Seeing Patrick standing on the same balcony that David once used to lord it over his staff and family may not be particularly subtle, but it is effective. Indeed, this is the same balcony where David's sadistic power games were first revealed to the audience - spotting a maid precariously carrying a tray laden with china, David calls her, forcing her to stop, tray in hand. The longer he leaves her standing, the more difficult it becomes for her to hold the tray, and the more the china clinks, all the while he stares down at her, grinning, saying nothing, revelling in the power he holds over her.
Another important theme is a mockery of the aristocracy. This is seen most clearly in the third episode, and especially in the odious character of Princess Margaret. However, the theme is present throughout all five episodes in one shape or another. In "Never Mind", for example, the Melrose family and their circle of friends are shown to be humourless, vainglorious prigs. The show depicts a decadent, toxic, emotionally calcified, and morally bankrupt class of people belonging to another age, that has somehow lingered into modernity and is desperately holding on to its outdated traditions.
Of course, this also raises perhaps one of the most obvious objections to the show - "why should we care?" Well, in part, we shouldn't. Essentially, this is the story of a spoiled rich kid. It's the very definition of white male privilege, which isn't exactly a very sympathetic theme at the moment. And it never really manages to shake that identifying characteristic. But there is more to it than that. The narrative may not be especially interesting, focusing more on isolated anecdotal-type incidents rather than a classic cause-and-effect plot, but for the themes, for the humour, for what it says about the British peerage, and, especially, for Cumberbatch's performance, this is certainly worth checking out. True, so dominant is his work that on more than one occasion, it effectively turns into a one-man play, meaning if you're not a Cumberbatch fan, you definitely won't enjoy it. In that sense, he dominates proceedings too much. But despite the fact that we know Patrick is an obnoxious addict, there is enough humanity to ensure we remember the very real trauma beneath the bluster. And in that sense, it remains always compelling - brilliantly acted, and with a lot to say about a myriad of issues.