Benedict Cumberbatch Will Lead New Showtime ‘Melrose’ Miniseries

No, Benedict Cumberbatch isn’t headed to Melrose Place, but he certainly isn’t headed to Baker Street, either. The Sherlock and Doctor Strange star has set his sights on yet another TV project, this time heading to Showtime to cover the five Patrick Melrose novels from author Edward St. Aubyn.

Per Showtime, the new five-episode miniseries is written by BAFTA Award nominee David Nicholls, with Cumberbatch starring as “an aristocratic and outrageously funny playboy who struggles to overcome the damage inflicted by a horribly abusive father and the mother who tacitly condoned the behavior.” Beginning production in August, each episode will cover one of the five novels, and be “set over the course of a few intense days in the life of the protagonist.”

So reads Showtime’s description:

Based on the acclaimed Patrick Melrose series of semi-autobiographical novels written by Edward St. Aubyn, MELROSE hilariously skewers the upper class as it tracks the protagonist’s harrowing odyssey from a deeply traumatic childhood through adult substance abuse and, ultimately, toward recovery.

In a tour de force role, Cumberbatch will play Melrose, an aristocratic and outrageously funny playboy who struggles to overcome the damage inflicted by a horribly abusive father and the mother who tacitly condoned the behavior. The limited series will be a true television saga, both gripping and humorous from Nicholls’ adaptation, with a dramatic sweep that encompasses the South of France in the 1960s, New York in the 1980s and Britain in the early 2000’s.

For his part, Cumberbatch also has Masterpiece drama The Child in Time on his plate, but apparently stated in 2013 his interest in one-day playing Patrick Melrose. We’ll see more as production shapes up over the year, so stay tuned for more Melrose.