lizagebhard Benedict Cumberbatch is brilliant as Patrick Melrose. I must confess that in the middle of the first episode I considered not watching anymore as it is a very distressing issue however I am glad I did. This series touches on many issues and speaking out against what is wrong and defending children at all costs is paramount.

lisamajohansson I couldn't manage to read the books. I tried but the story about the boy Patrick, knowing it was based on reality, and being a mother of two boys myself was too much. But tv is another thing and I am very glad for this adaption. Episode one maybe being a bit over the top but after that it turned into one of the best family dramas I have seen. In many ways reminding me of Bridshead revisited.Benedict Cumberbatch is amazing and so is all the other characters. I can't imagine what it took out of Hugo Weaving to play such a cruel role...A must see and a future classic.

PavlaBartonova Such brilliant acting. Especially in episode 1, Benedict Cumberbatch is playing a drug addict so genially, one is at awe at his acting talent. Stunning casting overall. I appreciate the educative side of the series, the peak into a family where a child is abused by a paedophile father, the psychological profiles of the perpetrator and his victims. It uncovers tragic happenings that are normally hidden from the eyes of other people. Watching this series made me research more on the subject and on how to spot and help victims. The direction, photography, design, costumes - piece of art!

The_late_Buddy_Ryan A picky FB friend insists that the TV series, based on Edward St Aubyn's novels, misses "the nuances of upper-class English life." Maybe so... The scenes set in the US--a rich widow's country seat, an East Side funeral home, a drug bazaar down by the old fish market (was that ever even a thing?)--do seem to be taking place in some prestige-soap-opera Neverland, about halfway between Downton Abbey and Naked Lunch. Strangely, only the scenes set at the Melrose family's postcard-perfect villa in the south of France feel like they belong to our world. As is often the case, 'cumberpatch quickly comes to seem like the only possible casting choice. Patrick's a compulsively jokey young man ("lucidity is overrated") who's endured every possible form of child abuse and gone on to abuse every possible substance as an adult. Despite his history, and despite St Aubyn's deadly-serious themes of abuse, addiction, recovery and redemption, much of the series plays like an old-school comedy of manners; Patrick's near-fatal coke binge in the first ep is embellished with cartoony optical FX, and Princess Margaret even turns up during a set-piece banquet scene, perhaps to illustrate St Aubyn's thesis that the fish rots from the head. By the end of the series, the tale of Patrick's personal catastrophe--the offscreen horrors and the drug damage--and the sharp-eyed social satire seem perfectly in balance, and as with Faust at the end of his long ordeal, there's even a hope of redemption for Patrick... if he doesn't f-- that up too. The supporting cast is very good, almost too good in the case of Hugo Weaving and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Patrick's terrifying parents, as well as Pip Torrens (Tommy Lascelles in The Crown) as the most enduring of Patrick's father's hateful old cronies. Anna Madeley is especially refreshing as Patrick's wife (the words "long suffering" don't begin to state the case), one of the few appealing and seemingly undamaged characters.