Benedict Cumberbatch new TV series: 5 things you need to know

Benedict Cumberbatch is all set to put down Sherlock's pipe, and discard Doctor Strange's cape and head over to Melrose Place. Ok, just kidding, not quite Melrose Place, but rather the small screen adaptation of the literary protagonist Patrick Melrose, created by Edward St Aubyn.

According to the official press release the series "hilariously skewers the upper class".

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".

It has already been confirmed that the series will comprise five episodes, for the Showtime network.

Here are 5 things you need to know about Benedict Cumberbatch's new series and the novels...

1. The Patrick Melrose series comprises five novels Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother's Milk and At Last. We presume that each episode will revolve around a novel.
2. The books have got everything in them. They chart the highly dysfunctional life of Patrick Melrose, who after the death of his parents, delves into a life of alcoholism and heroin addiction. But it's not all doom and gloom, and there is a sense of spiritual resurrection in the form of family and love.
3. While the books pretty much exist in an upper-class bubble, don't mistake them as being an ode to indolent aristocrats. In the mould of PG Wodehouse, Edward St Aubyn is dripping with satire and irreverence.
4. There has already been a feature-length film made of the book Mother's Milk in 2012. It starred Jack davenport and Adrian Dunbar. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described it thus: "The result looks a bit like television, though it isn't bad: sparky, boisterous, cynical, a little self-conscious but more grownup and literate than most new British movies."
5. According to a 2014 article in the Daily Telegraph, it is said that St Aubyn was repeatedly raped by his father from five through eight, with the connivance of his mother.