Benedict Cumberbatch is an actor who excels at a sweat. With his pallid complexion, gummy features and snaky blue eyes, his is a face eerily well-suited to a clammy sheen. It's no surprise, then, that his notable roles have provided ample opportunity for this. A socially awkward genius solving a murder (Sherlock). A socially awkward genius solving the war (The Imitation Game). A tortured teenage prince having an existential crisis (Hamlet). A posho in tweed suffering the heat of an Edwardian summer (Parade’s End). A posho in tails suffering the heat of a torrid accusation (Atonement)... You know it's going to get moist when Cumberbatch is in the credits.
Viewers hoping for sweat in his latest offering will not be disappointed. As Patrick Melrose, in the Sky adaptation of Edward St Aubyn’s novels, Cumberbatch serves up a veritable smorgasbord of perspiration. There is the heroin sweat (vein-busting convulsions, dripping forehead). There is the cocaine sweat (quivering mouth, thin trickles along the temple). The quaaludes sweat (rolling eyes, slack mouth, pearly beads on the upper lip). The sober sweat (a light, even dampness). And the hunting-for-drugs sweat (anguished gurn, sticky collar), to name but a few. Each drop glistens with unique expression—on Cumberbatch’s forehead, on the back his neck, on the back of his knuckles. We are only on episode two.
Written by David Nicholls, the new five-part series is based on St Aubyn’s highly autobiographical Patrick Melrose cycle, which follows the title character as he comes to terms with the death of his hateful father. Melrose is an aristocratic misanthrope with an acid tongue, a way with the ladies and a severe addiction to heroin. He was repeatedly abused by his father as a child and has since suffered suicidal tendencies; drugs are employed as a (drastically unsuccessful) coping strategy. Another, better, coping strategy is sour humour: “In my family it was better to have been a concert pianist…,” says Melrose at his father’s wake. “Actually achieving anything would have been a sign of vulgar ambition.” At another point he laments his sobriety: “It’s fucking hard being lucid.” Like the novels, the programme pulls off the rare feat of treating an extremely heavy subject matter with a lightness of tone. It strings along the audience with razor-sharp witticisms and searing social comedy, before suddenly ricocheting into a suicide attempt, a drug trip, or a traumatic glimpse into Melrose’s past.
What's especially impressive about this adaptation is not only that it is enjoyable, but that it directly confronts the problem of addiction without glamorising it. Other dramas about womanising addicts—for example Mad Men or Californication—tend to focus on the debauchery as much as the interior consequences; this makes it easy for the viewer to avoid processing the trauma. Watching Mad Men’s Don Draper pour himself yet another glass of whiskey, having hit yet another rock bottom, doesn't quell the desire (provoked by the sexy depiction of the world of the programme) to reach for a cigarette and a whiskey yourself. Even in Channel 4’s Sherlock, the detective's opium habit is seen as a facet of his genius: a necessary method for him to open the doors of perception. There is something beguiling and (literally) intoxicating about watching someone dance so close to the cliff edge. Indulging this behaviour onscreen can make it seem attractive rather than repellent.
"Last year, of the 280,000 people who sought medical help for substance addiction from the NHS, 52 per cent were opiate addicts"Mercifully, such indulgence is absent in Patrick Melrose. This is in large part due to the reason behind Melrose’s addiction: there is nothing remotely enviable about his wealthy upbringing. But it is also because of the way the programme is shot. During the most unpleasant moments, the camera focuses closely on Cumberbatch’s face—creating an atmosphere of claustrophobia that is both mesmerising and intensely distressing. We watch as Melrose wretches and spews, as he shakes uncontrollably and—yes—sweats feverishly while clutching his knees in the back of a cab, or on the floor of a hotel room. Cumberbatch's voiceover, spliced with his own spoken dialogue, further demonstrates the polyphony of voices at work in his head. This is a man trapped inside his own mind, unable to communicate properly with anyone except himself, and even then in fractured nonsense which he is often unable to contextualise. Though charismatic, Melrose is in no way aspirational. And any fun which comes out of his hedonistic lifestyle is—swiftly and dramatically—eclipsed by the torture of his mental and physical struggle.
Creating the series has itself been something of a struggle. Producers Rachel Horovitz and Michael Jackson (not that one) have been seeking the rights for the Patrick Melrose novels for years—they finally secured them in 2013. What followed was an exhaustive search for the right team members. Nicholls was enlisted as the writer on the project after being subject to an “old-fashioned audition,” in which he had to pitch an entire episode, and then have lunch with St Aubyn. When it came to writing the script, Nicholls has said that he walked around London listening to the Melrose audiobooks for “literally years” so as to perfectly capture the tone.
Cumberbatch’s journey to play Melrose was equally extraordinary. There exists a YouTube video—possibly in connection with an online Q&A dating from 2014—in which he is asked what his dream roles would be. His answers? “Hamlet and Patrick Melrose.” (A nifty response: he played Hamlet at the National in 2015.) In the video Cumberbatch goes on to speak mellifluously about St Aubyn’s book, giving a suspiciously perfect-sounding character analysis—although he claims not to have known that the producers were shopping for a lead at the time, or even that the rights had been bought.
Once he’d secured an audition, Cumberbatch has said more recently that he was required to read all five novels in a week in order to prepare: “I had a few sleepless nights.” This seems to contradict his claim to have read the books in 2014… But fine. However much of this is sincere—the underlying point we can draw from these anecdotes about the creation of the programme is how closely the book is interwoven into the adaptation, how much psychological research and detail went into the procedure.
The precision and detail has paid off—hugely—culminating in a nuanced, sensitive and immensely watchable programme about addiction. It is high time that this kind of programme came to our screens. And it is high time that heroin addiction, specifically, was given a nuanced treatment. Last year, of the 280,000 people who sought medical help for substance and alcohol addiction from the NHS, 52 per cent were opiate addicts (29 per cent were alcoholics). 73 per cent of addicts were men. Programmes like Patrick Melrose—which deal with the subject so gracefully—may well help propel the scale and consequences of this problem into the spotlight.
