Benedict Cumberbatch is returning to TV for Showtime’s drama miniseries Patrick Melrose and with the show’s arrival now less than two months away, a short new promo trailer has debuted. It’s a sparse teaser unfortunately, not really showing us any footage and instead relying on the British star’s sheer star power and good looks to entice the audience into watching… which, let’s be honest, will probably do the trick.
For those unfamiliar with the project, Patrick Melrose is a five-part series 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 five books in the series, with each episode of the TV show encompassing one of them. The project will be written by David Nicholls (Bridget Jones’ Baby) and directed by Edward Berger and alongside Cumberbatch, Hugo Weaving (Lord of the Rings) and Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight) will co-star as Melrose’s parents, while Anna Madeley (The Crown) will portray his wife. Allison Williams and Blythe Danner also have roles.
Patrick Melrose airs on Showtime at 9PM ET on May 12th. But if you can’t wait quite that long for your next Cumber-fix, you can catch him on the big screen a couple of weeks earlier, when he stars as Stephen Strange in Avengers: Infinity War, arriving April 27th.