Netflix: Series “Eric”: One man’s theft is another man’s progress

When nine-year-old Edgar Anderson (Ivan Morris Howe) goes missing, parents, police and the media are certain that he has been kidnapped or the victim of a violent crime. But is that actually true? The six-part Netflix series “Eric” tells of the disappearance of a boy in run-down, violent-crime Manhattan in the 1980s. Edgar is supposed to walk a few blocks to school alone, but he never gets there. His father Vincent (Benedict Cumberbatch) is the creative mind of the Sesame Street-like, municipally financed TV show “Good Day Sunshine” and his grandfather Robert (John Doman) is a real estate mogul who drives out homeless people in Manhattan as part of an upgrading strategy in collaboration with the Manhattan city government .

The parents are completely desperate because of Edgar’s disappearance, the police find the boy’s blood-stained T-shirt and begin to arrest suspects, including the caretaker of their apartment building. Even the father is targeted by the investigators. But there is no trace of Edgar. While father Vincent loses himself more and more in alcohol and finally hallucinates and sees a huge monster doll that his son designed shortly before his disappearance, Edgar’s mother Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann) distributes leaflets and works with Inspector Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III).

“Eric” is a meticulously staged 80s vintage series with great music by, among others, The Cure, Godley and Creme and 10cc, which becomes increasingly socially critical as the plot progresses. What begins as an incredibly exciting thriller or crime story about a missing child and visually showcases the New York of past decades develops into a complex story about racism, homophobia, social segregation, official arbitrariness, corruption, sexual abuse and unrestricted police violence.

The Black Inspector Michael Ledroit discovers a connection with the case of another missing teenager who disappeared a few months earlier. Only he is not white, like the celebrity child Edgar, and police officers also seem to be involved in the case. When Ledroit, who cares for his partner who has AIDS at home and hides his gayness from homophobic colleagues, investigates his own ranks, he is massively threatened.

»Eric« unfolds a fascinating metropolitan panorama and delves into the world of puppeteers: it goes into seedy nightclubs, garbage dumps, the apartments of the upper ten thousand and the underground quarters of homeless people who camp on the edge of the subway tracks.

But the series also tells a lot about the lack of understanding between arguing parents towards their children, as well as the inability of Vincent’s father to respond to his son’s creativity. The father-son conflict is passed down from generation to generation in a modified form. The question of what a functioning home is becomes a political matter, which is also debated at demonstrations in the wake of the sometimes brutal expulsion of homeless people through police raids. “You love this park,” real estate agent Anderson says at the end to his artist son Vincent, pointing out to him that Central Park was created in the mid-19th century through the dispossession and violent displacement of black communities, a historical theme that was discussed in New York York is now an integral part of a public debate about gentrification and racism. “Some call it theft, but it is progress,” is how the real estate agent sums it up in his logic.

»Eric« tells an empowering story whose characters fight exactly against this logic. In the end it has an almost too sappy twist, but it still develops a narrative force in this story, which is extremely exciting right up to the end with countless unexpected twists and turns, which also has a lot to do with the great acting performances in this unusual and absolutely worth seeing series.

Available on Netflix