This is a show about grief, is what I’d been scrolling on social media over the past few weeks since Mare of Easttown premiered on HBO. I stayed away all along. Thinking, no, seriously, who wants grief? Glad I changed my mind, eventually. To report back my two rupees’ worth. Man, this is a show about people, who’ve been through stuff.
Kate Winslet in 'Mare of Easttown'
Mare of Easttown
On: Disney+Hotstar
Creator-writer: Brad Ingelsby
Cast: Kate Winslet, Evan Peters
Rating: ****
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Imagine a one-book wonder, in his 50s — an author with his best/only work behind him. He’s settled, therefore, in a teaching job at a local university. Maybe Suketu Mehta (Maximum City)? But Mehta teaches, if I’m not mistaken, at New York University, which is as posh as it gets.
On this show, with Guy Pearce playing that fictional author Richard Ryan, we’re looking at a sleepy town called Easttown — I googled, it exists. He hooks up one random night, with a woman he meets at a bar, Mare (Kate Winslet), a cop, no less.
For his second night out, he invites her over for the nth celebration of his solitary book, which still has him surrounded by sufficient female attention. Bored to death, she walks out of that party, until he escorts her back.
Watch the trailer here:
Now, this seven-part mini-series is effectively a murder-mystery. General thumb-rule suggests that any scene must either take the story forward, or tell you more about the character. The scene above demonstrates neither — not at that moment anyway, since the arc of universe is long. As is that of a brilliantly written show.
What does that scene do? Helps you warmly, voyeuristically enter regular life of the lead character. Not as if it was some revelatory sub-plot. You feel like you’re just there with her. Something doesn’t always have to happen — for you to remain interested. You ought to be interested in the people first. And, hell, you are — all through Mare of Easttown.
Make no mistake. As the title suggests, it’s still about the cop-lady, Mare, in action, in Easttown, a Pennsylvania kasbah, off the US East Coast. A place so strongly mapped that this local police officer is as good as everybody’s cousin. Everything professional is personal for her.
Especially the two cases, involving young girls — one missing, the other dead —that’s kinda shaken up this town. In the second case, even witnesses/evidences, somehow or the other, circle back to her own social circle! The crime isn’t of the proportion that should shock the viewer/world, when human lives already appear so cheap.
Again, you care, because you’re deeply invested, in the lives of others — slowly, subtly, without excessive highs/lows, in the performances, camerawork, or background score. It’d be facetious to call this crime-fiction anything but a gentle, relationship drama, channelling ex-husbands/wives, grannies, girlfriend, boyfriend, cousin, orphan, priest, shrink, bummer, heartbreak, jealousy, affection, cruelty, care….
An undercurrent of melancholy unites all. Enough that you take your eyes off the actual crime? Oh, no. Not for a frickin’ second. Because this is also a murder-mystery that checks each box/trope you might associate with the genre.
That is, at every unpredictable turn, the script seeds a doubt. And plants a new mystery. While you wait, and watch the jungle of emotions grow. Just as you feel the killer’s been nabbed? They so haven’t.
Since there is indeed the main (female) cop, there is very much the buddy-cop! Although this young man (Evan Peters) isn’t simply in on the car-chase. He’s also someone the heroine can exchange mild pop-philosophy with, as she tells him, “Doing something great is overrated. ‘Coz [then] people expect that out of you all the time. What they don’t realise is you’re just as f***ed up as they are.”
Yup, that’s Kate Winslet. Supposedly the f***ed up one, on this show! Hers is an overworked, depleted but daring Al Pacino (from Heat) type (male) character, you’ve admired in multiple cop-movies.
But you ain’t seen nothin’ like a wholly internalised Winslet as in this series, yet — floating/sinking inside a Titanic in her own head. Those are deadest eyes you’ll meet. Concealing yet revealing the most charming on-screen personality you’ll come across.
It’s as brave for cop Mare, guzzling Rolling Rock beers and solving crimes, as for Winslet, the ultimate ’90s heartthrob, to show up as a grand-mom on screen, and play it like it was really no big deal. Killing it with her lines. Hiding none on her face. Giving it back when it counts. But living within her shell otherwise.
This is a show about grief, is what I’d been scrolling on social media over the past few weeks since Mare of Easttown premiered on HBO, the pioneers of Peak TV. Which means, as with their other new shows (available on Disney-Hotstar in India), they’d drop a fresh episode every week (like network television) — generating enough buzz leading up to the finale.
I stayed away all along. Thinking, no, seriously, who wants grief? Glad I changed my mind, eventually. To report back my two rupees’ worth. Man, this is a show about people, who’ve been through stuff. Haven’t we? Death/murder/mystery’s just side dish.
Also Read: Kate Winslet, Nicole, Reese: Hollywood’s top actresses who feature in series
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