In the last decade, Britain's aristocracy has experienced a kind of nostalgic golden age, not in real life but onscreen, notably in "Downton Abbey" and "The Crown," which highlight their glamorous lives but also their humanity, despite their wealth and status. So consider the recent Showtime miniseries "Patrick Melrose" a reality check. After viewing the program, you won't be pining for the Earl of Grantham trying to preserve his palatial estate for posterity. The five-part series, now available on Blu-ray from Acorn, based on the highly lauded five autobiographical novels of Edward St. Aubyn (the 21st-century Evelyn Waugh, well worth reading), is primarily about addiction and abuse, but the undercurrent is a scabrous attack on the upper class, not only how banal and cruel they can be, but in one case, the embodiment of pure evil.
It's 1982, and Patrick Melrose (Benedict Cumberbatch) receives word that his father David (Hugo Weaving) has died. He travels to New York to collect the ashes. Despite resolving to give up drugs, he winds up using heroine, cocaine, speed, alcohol and Quaaludes, not to mention sexual hookups with women, to deal with his mixed emotions, mostly euphoria tinged with volcanic pain. The hour culminates in a botched suicide attempt to get relief from the misery of his existence. It is not until the second episode that we begin to comprehend how his scurrilous behavior masks the traumatic horror undergirding his damaged psyche. In flashback he recalls growing up in France, with his father ("only the best or go without") raping him at age 8 (pitch-perfect Sebastian Maltz), while his mother Eleanor (Jennifer Jason Leigh) turned the other way. Steeped in her own denial-induced alcoholism to ward off the prison and agony of her marriage, she is terrified of her husband, who humiliates and abuses her, and intimidates the staff. The rest of the series shows how Patrick struggles to remain on-and-off sober as he becomes a lawyer, marries Mary and produces two children, continues to have affairs, leading to an emotional meltdown at his mother's memorial, in often-vain attempts to cope with the gaping wound that has defined his life.
The five episodes correspond to each of the five books spanning 40+ years, with director Edward Berger commenting in a DVD interview that "every episode looks different and has its own visual style, representing the psychological development of the character and reflecting the decade." The series has the arduous task of trying to get the audience to feel sympathetic to a wealthy, aristocratic cad. Grim subject matter combines with savagely funny social satire. Patrick, while imbibing all the perks of aristocracy, is also a self-loathing victim of its condescension, self-indulgence, decadent callousness, and moral rot. This perilous balance is exemplified in the third episode. During an opulent 1990 birthday party at a country mansion of well-bred, backbiting snobs, a caustic Princess Margaret humiliates the French ambassador and belittles the hosts' daughter with icy put-downs. This is contrasted with the simple refreshments and honesty of a Narcotics Anonymous meeting that a resistant Patrick briefly attends.
Such tightrope emotional acrobats would never work without the searing brilliance of Cumberbatch's performance, which won a BAFTA award for best dramatic actor. Cumberbatch's mood-swinging, self-destructive, dexterous physical acuity ricochets between body-shaking, slurred speech, hallucinations, talking to himself in monologues as he struggles with the voices in his head, and passing out during a conversation, all within a few minutes. He vacillates between self-deprecating charm and crackling black comic wit. Opening his father's coffin he quips, "It's just what I wanted! You shouldn't have!" When a waiter asks if he would care for a dessert, he replies, "How do you care for a dessert? Feed it? Visit it on Sundays?" Not only is Patrick Melrose Cumberbatch's best acting since his much-praised Sherlock Holmes, it may be the best portrait of a drug addict/alcoholic committed to film.
The thesis of "Patrick Melrose," long familiar to LGBTQ audiences, is how we become free by confronting and understanding our past, though that involves the exhumation of traumas long buried. So the miniseries is ultimately a tale of survival and redemption in the form of a truce. In its venomous satire of the upper British crust, the series declares that one's class or past doesn't determine your fate or whether you will be a good person. You must strip away your illusions. For some viewers this will be a punishing show to endure, but for the hardy in spirit, it's an opportunity to witness a Master Class performance.