Reviews

‘Patrick Melrose’ Review: The Right Way to Do Wrong
This adaptation of Edward St. Aubyn’s novels revels in bad behavior.

By John Anderson

The elegantly appalling “ Patrick Melrose, ” a five-part Showtime series based on the novels of Edward St. Aubyn, might best be summed up by the snaking, sliding, minutes-long tracking shot in episode 3, a trip around a voluptuous London estate house and its debauched party guests. It’s not merely a cinematographic stunt, though it is impressive—the camera moving from room to room, from character to character, charting a conversational flow of false bonhomie, backbiting and random bits of hypocritical snark that constitute upper-class party chatter and low instincts. The twists and turns are dependent on whatever exchange seems headed in the most vicious direction—and isn’t that where we want to go? Isn’t that why we came?

Making the viewer complicit in the voyeurism and vice of “Patrick Melrose” is a daringly faithful way of adapting the five fairly notorious Melrose novels, in which Mr. St. Aubyn alchemized a childhood of unspeakable sexual abuse into a glittering literary oeuvre. We say “unspeakable” because even the series can’t quite bring itself to mention it out loud. Of course, there’s nothing revelatory in the idea that the crimes against Patrick—played by Benedict Cumberbatch as the posh junkie, Sebastian Maltz as the beautiful, wounded child—occur at every stratum of society, Patrick’s being one of considerable elevation. There is, however, some perverse satisfaction to be found in the “Patrick Melrose” portrayal of a depraved aristocracy. And if the viewer also experiences a twisted glee at Patrick’s misbehavior—aka his efforts to kill himself with booze and heroin—it’s partly due to the passion he invests, the money he squanders, and the mordantly hilarious view he has of his own disordered psyche. Also, his caustic loathing of his father, David (Hugo Weaving, sulfurous and brilliant), whose ashes Patrick will collect in New York. (“How did he die? I forgot to ask, I was so dizzy with glee. I mean dazed with grief.”)

The adaptation was done by David Nicholls. Jennifer Jason Leigh is Patrick’s mother, Eleanor, who shares all his demons and some of his vices. The supporting cast includes Allison Williams, Blythe Danner, Prasanna Puwanarajah and Jessica Raine. But it’s Mr. Cumberbatch’s show, and he brings enormous intelligence, vulnerability and acerbic wit to Patrick, who carries the hurt child around inside, even while careening through ’80s Manhattan, tossing $20 bills at everyone and trashing his hotel. He is indulged at every turn, including among the heroin dealers of the then-burning Bronx, and director Edward Berger, abetted by cinematographer James Friend, make Patrick’s universe, even when his behavior is at its most depraved, into something clean, vividly colorful and artful. Too artful, which is the point. Mr. Cumberbatch is exceedingly fun to watch. And there’s a seductive allure to bad behavior. But “Patrick Melrose” also operates like a conflicted mind, camouflaging the awful with the beautiful.