The Patrick Melrose trailer introduces us to Benedict Cumberbatch's latest literary egomaniac

Here’s one for anyone who’s ever wanted to see Benedict Cumberbatch play a famous literary egomaniac, except without all those Sherlock clues and mysteries always flitting around and getting in the way. Showtime today released the trailer for Cumberbatch’s upcoming five-episode series Patrick Melrose, based on Edward St. Aubyn’s tale of the titular Brit.

Each episode of the series will cover one of St. Aubyn’s novels, which track Melrose’s slow growth from a drunken, drug-addicted playboy, constantly fleeing from the memory of his abusive father (Hugo Weaving) and neglectful mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh), into some sort of working semblance of a human being. The upshot, apparently, being a lot of shots of Cumberbatch being witty and drunk as hell (when he’s not issuing that famous thousand-yard stare), something we can definitely see ourselves being on board for when the series debuts some time later this year.