‘Girls’ Allison Williams Joins Benedict Cumberbatch for Showtime ‘Patrick Melrose’

We’ve all naturally wanted to see the girls of Girls cross over with Sherlock, and Showtime’s Patrick Melrose might be our best bet. Allison Williams has joined the Benedict Cumberbatch miniseries cast in a role that’s practically Marnie rearranged.

Per Deadline, Williams joins the new five-episode miniseries written by BAFTA Award nominee David Nicholls, based on the five Patrick Melrose novels from author Edward St. Aubyn. Cumberbatch stars 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,” while Williams portrays Marianne, an acquaintance that Patrick (Cumberbatch) encounters during his playboy years in New York.

Also cast in the series are Showtime Twin Peaks star Jennifer Jason Leigh, Matrix and Lord of the Rings alum Hugo Weaving and The Crown guest Anna Madeley. Beginning production this month, each episode will cover one of the five novels, and be set over the course of a few intense days in Patrick’s life. So reads Showtime’s description:

Based on the acclaimed Patrick Melrose series of semi-autobiographical novels written by Edward St. Aubyn, PATRICK 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.

Cumberbatch also has Masterpiece drama The Child in Time on his plate, but had been interested in the role of Patrick Melrose for several years. We’ll see more as production shapes up, so stay tuned.