"Patrick Melrose" with Benedict Cumberbatch - review

it does not fill us so much with pleasure and bitterness as the good end of the good show. And although with the mini-series we are more prepared for this moment, the sweet-sour feeling is manifested with the same intensity. We've already told you about HBO's Patrick Melrose pilot's episode. We are happy to announce that even for the rest of the 4 hours the level never falls, the caste is still so extraordinary, and the story is still terribly difficult to bear. The second episode, "Nevermind", was developed almost entirely in Patrick's memoirs, 15 years before the events of the first episode. We see the perfect Melrose family summer in their house in southern France. Behind the pastel, sun-drenched colors of the idyllic landscape, however, we understand how young childhood is experienced by young Patrick (heartbreakingly played by Sebastian Maltz). We witness the joyous sadism of the father (Hugo Weaving) and the utter frustration and the alcoholic stupor of the mother(Jennifer Jason Lee) on Patrick.

The third episode, "Some Hope", is perhaps the most technically impressive episode of the five. There is a 10-minute continuous shot of a party from the highest levels of the English upper class - Princess Margaret (Harriet Walter) is in the middle of the joy. Even though we have not felt it before, we immediately see the satirical and mockery of the already sober Patrick (and the creators of the series) to the English class system, and the inevitable snobbering of those on the top. In the fourth episode, "Mother's Milk," we get a picture of Patrick's marriage and the fifth At Last closes the series in a satisfying and complete way - the five-episode archer's end is over, although he lets the audience speculate whether he will change or will slide back and forth again on the slide of depression and vices. Throughout the series we witness an emotional study of the fucked protagonist, but also everyone around him. Each minor character gets a satisfactory arch that makes the audience know them and feel them as real people, not just the backdrop of Patrick's life. We can not particularly mention Indira Warma as American Anne, who does not intend to take note of David Melrose's harassment, and Pip Torrance, playing Nicholas Pratt, David's last friend, whose endless vanity and snobbery are usually the source of the most humor in the whole series.

Unfortunately, the emotional charge reaches its climax in the third episode, and although it is undoubtedly one of the strongest scenes in the whole series, after Patrick crosses his great emotional barrier, hence it all feels like walking down the hill - not so satisfying. "Patrick Melrose" as a whole is an extremely television experience from start to finish, but it would be a mistake to expect the whole series to be like the pilot episode. Surplus and drug excesses from the first episode are changing and even yielding space, but the deep and serious study of emotions on topics such as grief, anger, trauma, and family burden begins from the first and does not stop until the final seconds of the five-hour marathon. Although he sometimes lacks some lightness and balance between swollen tension and continuous painful sarcasm, "Patrick Melrose" will undoubtedly remain like a pearl in the crown of Benedict Cumberbatch .

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