Eric

It feels like the purpose of this show was to adress as much societal issues as possible, and weave that all into a story.

It adresses; mental illness, addiction, gay discrimination, AIDS neglect, pedosexuality, gentrification, institutional racism, parental neglect and abuse, homelessness, corruption,....and I'm sure I missed a few.

When you strip it down though, to the centre of the storyline, the boy who's missing and what's going on with him, you're left with not a whole lot of substance to that.

Whether you like the show or not, it's strength will have to be working all those societal issues into one show, one story.

For me, I would have liked more substance to central storyline about the boy, and not all the sidesteps to add moral value.

And the show is a bit too long.

I agree with mostly all of the low reviews.

It's long, and it might become tedious.

The characters are unlikeable.

The unwinding of the plot point seems to be a middle finger to the viewers.

There's way too much going on to even make it into the agenda.

Nobody seems to care or noticed the bad CGI, or the incongruence of ambient.

It's supposed to happen during the mid 80's but everything looks as the 70's in the beginning and then of the 90's by the end.

And there's something called perspective, you can't have building far away looking as clear as the objects nearby.

Those are 6 hours that I will consider a long nap, just because I don't want to be upset.

I recently watched the show and found it to be a captivating and well-crafted series. The characters were well-developed, and the themes were thought-provoking. However, I couldn't shake off the feeling that the show was slightly overstretched. Could have been made atleast 2 episodes shorter..

Sometimes I felt that the pacing dragged in a few places, and some scenes could have been trimmed or condensed to maintain a tighter narrative. In each episode the sideway scenes make you do fast forwarding.

Despite this, the show's strengths outweigh its weaknesses, and I would still recommend it to fans of the genre. The acting was superb, the writing was clever, and the overall story arc was satisfying.

I am conflicted. It's not a bad show, but I feel like it's been misleading in its advertisement, at least. When I read the premise, I expected something like a look back at father-and-son bonding experience, and the affect of separating the two due to cruel circumstances. But it does not really have much (if any) of that.

Other has pointed this out, that it tries to cover a lot of social issues. The issues covered are absolutely valid, they are important, and it may, indeed, be a good idea to cover them in a good show. But the way the show does it is very shallow and narrow. Even Vincent's mental illness (and anguish) is... Just too obscure, too wishy-washy and, in the end, somewhat pink-glassed. And Vincent's and Edgard's relationship is not described at all besides a few inconclusive scenes in 1st episode. I get it that lack of true connection between them could be the point, but it and both sides' reaction to it is just not believable. A short story "Father Dearest" I wrote a decade or so ago is about the same thing, and it is way more detailed and believable, and I am not a professional writer.

The second main storyline was way more interesting for me, because it was a detective work, and Ledroit felt way more human to me. It genuinely felt like he is an honest, but not perfect cop, that wants to really help the world. It might have been a bit cliched at times, but still good. It also worked nicely in terms of introducing little threads here and there and then converging them all at the end to show bigger picture. Predictable to an extent, but still good and satisfying.

But even this storyline, human connections felt... Underdeveloped. And this is the ultimate blow to this. The actors are amazing here, the way they bring the characters to life gives those characters weight, like there is a big background story behind each and every one of them. Those background stories are not tapped into, though. I get it, that in some cases it's done for the sake of "suspense" and mystery, and in some - to make things feel more "natural", but I feel, that if they stretched the show just for 1 or 2 more episodes by leveraging flashbacks, they could have enriched the characters and made them more relatable.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. You can definitely enjoy the show thanks to the actors, and you probably will be satisfied with the end of the investigation here, but the overall ending of the show will probably leave you somewhat empty.

I was reminded of the movie "Harvey" going back many, many years with Jimmy Stewart playing an alcoholic accompanied everywhere by an enormous six foot rabbit named Harvey.

Here we have Vincent, played by Cumberbatch, accompanied by Eric, a monster blue puppet originally imagined by his missing son Edgar.

There are many layers to this story, far too many which is unfortunate as they took away from the central story. Of multi-generational father-son relationships and the concept of monsters lurking underneath them.

I won't get into spoilers, but suffice to say it's all very gripping, showing the under belly of homelessness and corruption in 1980s New York.

A unique ending is satisfying and unexpected if a little too saccharine.

8/10.