“Mare of Easttown” heralds the kind of drama it will be with the first fixed shots. First a glimpse of a factory at dawn, then a sagging house, then a graveyard. Director Craig Zobel continues this architectural misery parade in a way that sets the mood like poured concrete: a trailing look shows a street clogged with faded houses shoulder to shoulder to one side, with a rotten grin masquerading as an old picket fence on the other side.
A row of brick chimneys juts into the sky with the coarseness of middle fingers snipping off a sun that reserves its gold for other places, making daylight look sickly and gray, even when the sky is cloudless. The scenery says so much, setting up the first human vocalization we hear which is a scream.
Zobel doesn’t make the titular burg look or feel like a place you’d like to visit, or end up, or have a breakdown. But the way Kate Winslet realizes that Detective Mare Sheehan is persuading you to hang on after the gloomy first hour. If you manage to do this, the show can grow on you.
But first, it must be overlooked that the seven-part limited series bears a resemblance to some grim working-class stories of small-town murder, the most important of which is Sally Wainwright’s “Happy Valley.” The parallels cannot be ignored, as both stories follow the middle-aged police in places where everyone knows her and everyone else, harboring grudges with the same level of care and dedication as they do for their own children.
Of the two series, “Happy Valley” is top shelf, while this is more of a jumble elevated by excellent performance. That shouldn’t count what Winslet, Jean Smart and the other women in the heart of “Mare of Easttown” have to offer.
The characters are the reason to stick with this show in opposition to the murder and missing persons cases, starting with the performance of Winslet. She gives Marc the spirit of a woman who has woken up for years waving everything she has and has no time to grieve, even though her life has given her many reasons to crumble.
Winslet isn’t quite into the Emmy bait tactic of putting her vanity in a drawer here, and it’s hard to decide if the way she bends her ox against her palate is the work of a regional dialect coach or the slipping off the accent.
But she does an admirable job of bearing the exhaustion of the city on her body, trudging around with shoulders slightly bent, sucking her annoyance into endless clouds of steaming smoke. She has a way of letting the character’s fury sit there, an unexploded ammunition that is still decidedly alive. And while that should make her impressive, it has the opposite effect on the people in town who expect her to solve all their problems.
Mare and her ex-husband Frank (David Denman) broke up, and while they get along enough to raise their grandson, their relationship is only slightly amicable due to a slow revelation of the reasons that remain best for viewing. He has found a way to move on while she deliberately stagnates.
Somehow the way Winslet plays this pulls you in and makes you hopeful for all the shots of goodness that come her way, like the fluttering fascination she inspires in Guy Pearce’s Richard, an optimistic literature professor about being over of his best time.
Whatever fuel Winslet injects into Mare is burned to the ground every day by Helen of Smart, Mare’s wise ass and hilariously mean parent who theatrically treats their relationship like it’s a terrible duty, she’s too lazy or tired to give up, even though she has she never actually signed up with the job.
Smart’s spicy gibes provide comical meat in this sad hero sandwich, and it’s a flavor that shouldn’t work here, but it does. In fact, it gives the show a much-needed humorous slant that spills over into Mare’s other interactions. In a scene where Mare summons a family gathering, Helen comes back to her genuinely perplexed and annoyed with “What the hell is a family gathering?” in a way so glorious, quietly dismissive that you deserve a medal.
Series writer and producer Brad Ingelsby reserves the widest development for Mare and her family, including daughter Siobhan (Angourie Rice), who takes on a sweet teen storyline who is constantly in danger of being buried in all the fear of adults, but somehow remains emerge. Other characters receive less care and nourishment in the script despite their importance, including Lori Ross from Julianne Nicholson, Mare’s best friend, and Dawn Bailey (Enid Graham), another high school friend who turned antagonist after Mare failed to find her missing. daughter to take home.
In general, a show like this takes a lot of effort to hide a little bolt of thunder in its pocket by convincing us that we’re looking at one kind of mystery to make us cold with a completely different scenario, but no, that bit of plot hums along in a completely typical fashion.
From the moment you meet the eventual victim of the murder that entangles Marc, the scent of doom that surrounds her drifts right off the screen. Do you remember the cemetery? This is where women disappear or are found dead, and when Marc cannot find the murderer or the disappeared man right away, the city puts curses on her head.
That this is often treated as something off the point can feel baffling at times, especially on the points you care more about, say, Mare’s developing partnerships with a new hotshot detective played by Evan Peters or wondering what the deal is with another weird newcomer. There are a lot of little stories here that crowd out for attention, like those houses, and sometimes it doesn’t quite work, or shouldn’t, but a very tired mare takes us through it.
When “Mare of Easttown” is in its jerks – some small and one that is absolute – they can be stunning enough to give value to its smug pace.
Easttown, Pennsylvania is a real place, by the way, and in a move that could be interpreted as a defense of the city, it posted a press release on its official website stating that most of the scenes were filmed in Coatesville, Aston, and Drexel Hill. It’s like they say, “We’re not really like that!” Understandable, although they also point out that Ingelsby grew up there. But the place of honor of every citizen rests with the people, not with the outside; and in that respect the writer cleared his birthplace well enough.
“Mare of Easttown” premieres on HBO on Sunday, April 18 at 10 pm.