---
title: "Patrick Melrose"
year: 2018
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/patrick-melrose"
fi1m_score: 78
critics_score: 81
critics_reviews: 12
published: "2026-09-17T19:45:27.904969+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-17T19:45:28.471486+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Patrick Melrose (2018)

Created by David Nicholls · 1h 00m · MPA TV-MA · Drama

**Fi1m score: 78** · Critics 81 from 12 reviews

*In a sentence:* A man carries his father’s ashes round New York for a day and cannot decide whether to grieve or to score

> Benedict Cumberbatch spends the first hour high in New York with his father’s ashes in a box, and it is the funniest thing we have seen him do. What follows is careful, well made and a little tidier than the books.

## Synopsis

London, 1982. Patrick Melrose (Benedict Cumberbatch), rich, idle and on heroin, is told by telephone that his father David Melrose (Hugo Weaving) has died in New York. He flies out to collect the ashes and has promised himself he will stay clean for the trip. He does not. Over a single day he checks into a hotel he cannot afford, collects a cardboard box from a funeral parlour, calls dealers, and takes Marianne Banks (Allison Williams) to dinner. Between fixes the series cuts back to a house in the south of France in the 1960s, where a small boy (Sebastian Maltz) waits for his father and his mother Eleanor (Jennifer Jason Leigh) looks the other way.

## Review

Edward St. Aubyn wrote five short novels about Patrick Melrose, and David Nicholls, who created and wrote the series, has given each one an hour. It is a good plan: the books are about a man who cannot leave the past alone, and the episodes keep going back to it. The story runs from New York in 1982 to Provence in the 1960s and on to Patrick’s own attempts at fatherhood. We recommend it. The first two hours are as good as British television drama gets, and the last three are good television, which is not quite the same thing.

Cumberbatch’s Patrick arrives in New York already high, collects his father’s ashes from a funeral parlour in a cardboard box, and carries the box about the city all day while trying to decide whether to grieve or to score. He does both. He talks to himself in half a dozen voices, chairs a meeting of his own personalities in a bathroom, and pursues Marianne Banks (Allison Williams) with the confidence of a man who has never been told no by a waiter. We laughed a great deal. Then Edward Berger cut to a small boy (Sebastian Maltz) walking down a staircase in a hot French house, and the laugh stopped in our throats. That cut, made over and over, is how the series works. Every joke has a child underneath it.

James Friend shoots the New York hour with the camera loose and the colours turned up, hotel corridors in a sick yellow and the streets smeared with neon, so the screen looks the way Patrick feels. France is still and golden, and that is the point: it is the most beautiful place in the series and the worst things happen there. Tom Burton’s production design gives Patrick a suite he cannot pay for and fills it, over one evening, with the litter of a binge. Keith Madden puts Cumberbatch in a good suit that gets steadily less good. The editors, Dan Roberts, Luke Dunkley and Tim Murrell, make the jumps between decades read as memory rather than explanation, and Hauschka’s score, mostly a piano with things laid on its strings, keeps ticking under the comedy.

The second hour belongs to the parents. Hugo Weaving plays David Melrose softly, correcting everyone’s grammar, and it is as frightening as anything we have seen him do because his voice is never raised. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Eleanor, the American money that pays for all of it, drinks in the bedroom and finds reasons to be elsewhere. What David does to his son the series does not show and we will not describe. Berger shows us the door and lets us do the rest. It moved us more than we were prepared for, by being restrained where the New York hour was not.

The problem is what comes after. Once Patrick is clean, or trying to be, the series has less to do, and the last three hours are about dinner parties, a marriage under strain and forgiving people who do not deserve it. Most critics have liked these hours less and so did we. Nicholls keeps the dialogue quick, but Cumberbatch’s tics, the darting eyes and the muttered asides, were built for a man on heroin and look like mannerism on a man on mineral water. Each hour also arrives at its lesson too neatly, with a speech near the end to make sure we have understood, which the novels were too cruel to allow.

There is plenty of British drama about miserable people in large houses, and this is one of the sharper ones because it never asks us to admire the houses. The addiction is treated as a symptom rather than as the plot. Most dramas about drugs give you one big relapse. This one gives you the small ones, the reasonable-sounding ones, and they are harder to watch.

It is an 18 and it earns the certificate twice over, in the first two hours. Watch those two in one sitting and the rest across a week. Patrick would not approve of the moderation, but he would recognise it.

*Fi1m score 78, published 17 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews are warmly positive, and the praise lands almost entirely on one man. Most critics describe Benedict Cumberbatch’s Patrick as the reason to watch: a performance that swings from slapstick to tragedy within a single scene, with at least one reviewer judging it the best work he has done. Behind him, the adaptation is credited with boiling the novels down into coherent, intelligent television, and Nicholls’ screenplay and Edward Berger’s direction are singled out for keeping the early episodes both funny and bleak.

The reservations are few and mild. Some find Patrick hard company, selfish and unpleasant for long stretches, and one or two note that the tone and pacing whip about. The spread is narrow: eleven positive notices and one mixed. The lone dissent comes from Paste, which finds the series indulgent and short on wit, the upper-class dysfunction over-familiar, and the central performance erratic rather than virtuosic. Nobody else agrees.

### Reviews we read (12)

- **The Times**, Carol Midgley (★★★★★): Cumberbatch's gobsmacking performance as the drug-addicted Patrick is superb, funny and convincing in shifting from tragic to slapstick. The portrayal of a screwed-up posh boy's descent into drug-fuelled insanity surpasses anything the actor has done before. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/article/tv-review-patrick-melrose-midsomer-murders-nbnwgnttj)
- **The Guardian** (90/100, inferred): The adaptation is a triumph, boiling down the books into intelligent television with sharp dialogue and immersive direction by Edward Berger. Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a brilliant, hilarious yet tragic performance as the addict Patrick. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/may/13/patrick-melrose-review-brilliant-portrayal-addiction-benedict-cumberbatch)
- **Radio Times**, Eleanor Bley Griffiths (85/100, inferred): Cumberbatch is captivating and perfectly cast as the hot mess anti-hero in a first episode that is fantastically funny as well as deeply tragic. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/patrick-melrose-preview-benedict-cumberbatch/)
- **Empire**, Ben Travis (80/100, inferred): Cumberbatch delivers a brash, register-spanning performance in a pure character study that mixes dark humor with emotional depth in the early episodes. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/patrick-melrose-review/)
- **IndieWire**, Ben Travers (80/100, inferred): The limited series is a poignant and revealing portrait of trauma and recovery that succeeds in its finale. Cumberbatch delivers a standout performance that anchors the adaptation's emotional depth. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/showtime-patrick-melrose-review-finale-ending-spoilers-1201971833/)
- **Vulture** (75/100, inferred): The series is an indictment of privilege and trauma that benefits from Cumberbatch's go-for-broke performance across its emotional range. The adaptation condenses the novels effectively while highlighting class and addiction themes. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2018/05/patrick-melrose-review.html)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, Tim Goodman (70/100, inferred): A compelling and difficult roller coaster fueled by Cumberbatch’s towering performance, with whipsaw directing and deft handling of tone in the early episodes. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/patrick-melrose-review-1106970/)
- **The i Paper**, Jeff Robson (70/100, inferred): The adaptation vividly conveys the addict's life with visual flair and Cumberbatch seizes a dream role, but the character is often unpleasant and selfish. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/patrick-melrose-sky-atlantic-review-toffs-behaving-badly-in-a-seriously-feelbad-drama-153810)
- **Variety**, Jacqueline Cutler (70/100, inferred): Cumberbatch is riveting as the drug-addled gentleman; Berger’s direction and Nicholls’ screenplay deftly translate the source material into a promising limited series. [Read](https://variety.com/2018/tv/reviews/tv-review-patrick-melrose-benedict-cumberbatch-1202789439/)
- **Collider**, Allison Keene (★★★★★): The series succeeds largely due to Benedict Cumberbatch's exceptional, nuanced performance as the troubled, charming Patrick. It blends witty, manic energy with emotional depth across its episodes, capturing the character's restless journey through trauma and recovery. [Read](https://collider.com/patrick-melrose-review-benedict-cumberbatch/)
- **Den of Geek**, Andrew Husband (4.5/5): Benedict Cumberbatch shines in this darkly comic miniseries about addiction, abuse, and recovery. The adaptation retains the source material's pacing and mixes tragedy with visual and verbal humor effectively. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/patrick-melrose-review-benedict-cumberbatch-shines-in-darkly-comic-miniseries/)
- **Paste**, Jacob Oller (6.3/10): The miniseries offers some familiar attractions in its portrayal of a damaged playboy but feels indulgent and lacks sufficient wit or originality. Benedict Cumberbatch's erratic performance and the familiar tropes of upper-class dysfunction do not elevate it beyond the ordinary. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/patrick-melrose/patrick-melrose-benedict-cumberbatch-showtime-revi)

## Details

- **Created by:** David Nicholls
- **Creator:** David Nicholls
- **Director:** Edward Berger
- **Writer:** David Nicholls
- **Novel:** Edward St. Aubyn
- **Cinematography:** James Friend
- **Editor:** Dan Roberts, Luke Dunkley, Tim Murrell
- **Music:** Hauschka
- **Production design:** Tom Burton
- **Costume design:** Keith Madden
- **Producer:** Stephen Smallwood
- **Cast:** Benedict Cumberbatch as Patrick Melrose; Jennifer Jason Leigh as Eleanor Melrose; Hugo Weaving as David Melrose; Sebastian Maltz as Young Patrick Melrose; Jessica Raine as Julia; Jennifer Armour as Border Control Officer; Allison Williams as Marianne Banks; Richard Brake as Mark
- **Runtime:** 1h 00m
- **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA
- **Release (the US):** 12 May 2018
- **Genres:** Drama
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAn7wJcFnUc

## Where to watch in the US

Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check.

Also available in: CA, FR, GB. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *The Singing Detective* (1986): A sick man in a hospital bed rewriting his childhood; the model for this sort of thing.
- *Withnail and I* (1987), Fi1m 88: Two well-spoken wrecks, one damp house, and the funniest hangover in British cinema. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/withnail-and-i.md)
- *Christiane F.* (1981): West Berlin heroin without the money or the jokes; the same needle, colder.
- *Sharp Objects* (2018), Fi1m 84: Another adult sent home to a house that made her, cut the same way, by memory. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/sharp-objects.md)
- *The Squid and the Whale* (2005), Fi1m 83: Clever, cruel parents and the boys who learn to talk like them. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-squid-and-the-whale.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/patrick-melrose