Riveting small-town drama
Clear your Monday nights this autumn because this slowburning, small town character study will be worth watching, writes James Croot.
Kate Winslet’s first television series in a decade simply leaves you wondering why she hasn’t done more.
While perhaps lacking the more demonstrative character traits of Mildred Pierce that helped earn her a Golden Globe and an Emmy, there’s enough nuance, craft and skill to suggest her Mare of Easttown (which begins screening on SoHo, Neon and Sky Go from April 19) could well see her featuring during the next awards season.
The first instalment of this slow-burning, but teasingly intriguing seven-part series is set over a single day – one that doesn’t start well and gets seemingly progressively worse for Winslet’s jaded small town detective Mare Sheehan.
An Easttown hero since the evening she scored the state championship-winning basket almost exactly 25 years ago, Mare is steeling herself for a night of reminiscing – and recriminations.
Unfortunately, one of her former team-mates’ daughters has been missing for more than a year and she’s concerned the police haven’t been doing enough to find her.
‘‘She’s a needle in a thousand haystacks,’’ Mare says, suggesting that the most likely whereabouts of ‘‘known drug abuser’’ Katie Bailey is
Craig Zobel ... does a terrific job here of establishing the characters and claustrophobic nature of Easttown.
‘‘probably at the bottom of the Delaware River’’.
Others in the town though forget that Mare is responsible for all the ‘‘burglaries, overdoses and all the really bad crap that happens around here’’, bypassing the station to call her direct to investigate their granddaughter’s sighting of a ‘‘peeper’’, or deal with what is clearly a domestic dispute between estranged siblings.
The latter, on this morning, leaves Mare with a leg injury, after a ‘‘pursuit’’ ends in an altercation with a fence.
And, if all that, and finding her grandson a budget-friendly terrarium, wasn’t enough, there’s the news that her exhusband is getting engaged and all the rest of her family will be attending a special dinner for him and his fiancee, rather than joining Mare at her big night.
Craig Zobel, best known to Kiwis for his corralling of Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor and a law-breaking Chris Pine for the Banks Peninsula shoot of the post-apocalyptic Z for Zachariah, does a terrific job here of establishing the characters and claustrophobic nature of Easttown.
In combination with American Woman and The Way Back screenwriter Brad Ingelsby and the ever-reliably brilliant Winslet, he paints a portrait of a woman who peaked early and found herself trapped and defined by that single event.
They also leave just enough mystery to keep you hooked and hanging out for the next episode.
Acerbic, cynical, grumpy, Winslet makes Mare memorable through moments large and small, whether it’s the way she attacks a chicken leg in her car, or attempts to deflect the attentions of the newly-arrivedin-town creative writing lecturer Richard (played by Winslet’s old Mildred Pierce sparring partner Guy Pearce) with a dismissive ‘‘my life’s complicated’’.
She’s a flawed ‘‘heroine’’ to rival Frances McDormand’s Mildred Hayes or Amy Adams’ Camille Preaker – the latter’s Sharp Objects is the show this most reminded me of.
Throw in some chilling and disturbing subplots involving the next generation, a solid, deep-benched supporting cast that also includes Julianne Nicholson, Evan Peters, David Denman, Jean Smart and Angourie Rice, and oldschool, drip-fed dramatics (and by that I mean one episode a week is your allocation) and the result is likely to be appointment viewing on Monday nights throughout the rest of autumn.