Review: Mare of Easttown
Is the new Kate Winslet series any good?
Alright, so I know I’m a little late on this one, but I just got around to watching the HBO limited series Mare of Easttown and let me just say, WOW!!! I didn’t think anything could top last year’s limited series I Know This Much is True starring Mark Ruffalo, but this came pretty damn close.
For those unfamiliar, Mare of Easttown was a 7-part limited series that just aired on HBO. I had seen the trailer;
; and thought it looked pretty good, but never got around to watching it. Then one night I figured; “What the hell, I’ve got nothing else to do,” and so I watched the first episode.
Before I talk about it, let me just give you a quick background:
The series follows a detective named Mare, played by the always incredible Kate Winslet. Seriously, somebody needs to tell this woman she’s allowed to suck at least once, I mean we all half-ass it at work sometimes. Anyway, it follows her story as a police detective of a small town called Easttown, in Pennsylvania. One of those, “everybody knows each other, nobody ever leaves” type of places. She is somewhat of a legend there, not just because she’s a great cop, but also because 25 years ago she made a game winning shot on her youth basketball team, which, as she puts it in one episode, “...wouldn’t be a big deal anywhere else, but in this town it is”.
One night, there is a murder, which leads Mare on the investigation. As the series progresses we learn more and more about Mare’s personal life and how not only is this case more personal to her than she thought, but also that she must face all of her own demons along the way and learn things about people she didn’t know.
I’ll be honest, when I was watching the first episode, I wasn’t immediately impressed. I thought, ok murder, cue the cop with a bitter past, cue the drama, I’ve seen this story a bunch of times already. Not that I didn’t think Winslet was good, I refer you back to my previous comment, but the story just didn’t seem that interesting. I was able to predict it and the dialogue seemed to have too much exposition. In other words, it didn’t feel like the way people really talk, but rather what we as an audience needed to know in order to move the story along. I didn’t think it was anything spectacular.
And this, ladies and gentleman, is why I don’t write reviews for a living, because I could not have been more wrong about this series.
Every complaint I had went away after about the first 20 minutes, and then the show took a dark turn and didn’t hold back. Once that happened, I was hooked immediately.
I pride myself on being pretty good at figuring out these “whodunit” stories, but this was just insanity.
I made predictions which were wrong, that led me to others, which were wrong, then they tell you something, but then there’s another twist, it just didn’t quit. I would specifically tell anyone watching to hold out until episode 5, titled Illusions. The last 10 minutes, to quote the late great Peter Boyle in Everybody Loves Raymond: “HOLY CRAP!!!” It gives us all a subtle nod the ending of The Silence of the Lambs, just to give you an idea of what to expect.
It’s really hard to talk about this story as a whole because, if there ever was a story that the less you know going in the better, it’s this one. I promise, nothing I have said here is giving anything away in the story.
One thing I can definitely talk about is the acting and writing.
In addition to Winslet, the rest of the cast is also great, including Guy Pearce, Evan Peters, Jean Smart, and “Roy” from The Office. (I know the actor has a name, but he’s always going to be Roy from The Office, let’s be honest.)
The writing is also amazing. It was written by a guy named Brad Ingelsby, who I never heard of before this. But I can tell you, I’m looking out for this guy’s work from now on because to write this show, you really have to be a fricking genius.
I could go on all day about this show, but I’ll just say, it was really damn good.
If I could leave you with anything it would be;
· Kate Winslet is a legend!!!
· I constantly kept saying to myself with every episode, “Jesus, I thought I had problems.”
· If you haven’t seen it, watch it on HBO Max, ASAP. And if you don’t have HBO Max, GET HBO MAX, so you can.