Kate Winslet plays a troubled cop in HBO’s miniseries.
Never judge a book by its cover.
But, like, really:Mare of Easttown?
Kate Winslet in HBO’s ‘Mare of Easttown’.Michele K. Short/HBO
That’s a confidently terrible title.
She’s tormented by a missing-teen cold case, which might be the tip of a serial-killer iceberg.
Can she solve the mystery?
Michele K. Short/HBO
Can she solve her emotional issues?
Both questions have the same exasperating answer: Probably, eventually.
Winslet helped launch the movie-stars-on-television trend with 2011’sMildred Pierce.
Addiction, teen pregnancy, mental disorders, and poverty run rampant.
It takes one whole episode for a dead body to show up.
Marebegins one year after the disappearance of a local teenager.
Mare is a local hero, haunted by the legend of her game-winning basket.
That’s a lot to live up to.
And, almost 25 years afterTitanic, Winslet has great fun living down any notion of aristocratic glamour.
Her default expression is an exhausted frown.
She sucks on a perpetual e-cigarette, which will never look cool on anyone.
When Mare busts her ankle chasing a junkie, Winslet adopts a magnificent limp that maps a whole psychology.
Every step seems to say:Christ, another thing to deal with.
And Mare’s ex-husband Mark (David Denman) was the victim’s teacher.
“There anybody you’renotrelated to?”
Pairing Peters' bright-eyed outsider with Winslet’s dour local suggests a spiky procedural.
But the miniseriesis more interested in exploring its protagonist’s home life.
Winslet plus Smart equals a megazord of intimidating acting talent.
Siobhan has a band, Androgynous, whose career I have become very invested in.
Did I mention that Mark lives with his fiance in the house right behind Mare’s?
Romantic intrigue swirls around the Sheehan women.
“Did I f— like a grandma?”
Oh, and right, yes: The murder.Mare’s investigation unfolds with dull familiarity.
I’m talking around some plot developments, and I am invested in finding out Who Did It.
Just know thatthe mystery moves at a glacial pace.
The material strains for twisted Opioid Gothic social resonance.
Zobel made last year’s blow-em-up satireThe Hunt.
I could’ve used more of that kitchen-sink verve.
“This isn’t about you, Mare,” Siobhan tells her mother.
“Not everything is.”
Someone tell the show.B-
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