Benedict Cumberbatch was spotted on the set of his latest project sporting a fetching eyepatch this week. No, the Sherlock and Marvel star is not ditching Doctor Strange to play a new version of Nick Fury in the MCU. This is actually for a new TV miniseries called Patrick Melrose, which is currently filming in Glasgow, Scotland, which has apparently been transformed into 1980s New York.
Patrick Melrose is a five-part series from Showtime based on the semi-autobiographical novels of Edward St. Aubyn, which follow his dysfunctional upbringing as part of an upper-class English family and his later alcohol and heroin addictions, as well as his loves and losses. The character of Melrose has been described as “an aristocratic and outrageously funny playboy who struggles to overcome the damage inflicted by a horribly abusive father and the mother who tacitly condoned the behavior.”
For more, here’s the official plot synopsis:
“The limited series will be a true television saga, both gripping and humorous from Nicholls’ adaptation, with a dramatic sweep that encompasses the South of France in the 1960s, New York in the 1980s and Britain in the early 2000’s.”
There are currently five books in the series, with each episode of the TV show encompassing one of them. The project will be written by David Nicholls and directed by Edward Berger and alongside Cumberbatch, Hugo Weaving and Jennifer Jason Leigh are playing Melrose’s parents, while Anna Madeley (The Crown) will portray his wife.
Patrick Melrose is expected to arrive on our screens sometime next year. If you need your Cumber-fix sooner rather than later, though, you can catch him as Stephen Strange in Thor: Ragnarok, arriving in US cinemas on November 3rd.
