Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
King’s ‘ Mr. Mercedes’ gets another chance
One of Stephen King’s most creepy and tense storieswas hiding in plain sight.
NEWYORK » One of Stephen King’s most creepy and tense stories was hiding in plain sight.
“Mr. Mercedes” started life in 2017 as a broadcast offering on theAT& T- owned, DirecTV- exclusive Audience Network, only to be left marooned with an uncertain future after the obscure channel was shut down. The crime series gets another life thismonth afterNBC’s Peacock streaming service acquired it.
“Nobody could find it, and that was enormously frustrating,” said director Jack Bender. “Hopefully it’s going to get the audience it’s always deserved.”
The pitch- dark series, adapted by David E. Kelley and starring Brendan Gleeson, is based on King’s bestselling Bill Hodges trilogy and follows a retired, ornery detective tormented by a seriously troubled serial killer who announces himself by mowing down dozens of people in line for a job fair in a stolen Mercedes.
“My intentionwas always to do a character driven, scary show about the monster inside these people instead of the monster outside the people,” Bender said. “Even though they’re monstrous people doing monstrous things, they are not, quote- unquote, bogeyman monsters.”
The first two seasons of “Mr. Mercedes” are now bingeable on Peacock. The show’s most recent outing, 2019’ s Season 3, will
arrive on a date to be announced.
In addition to Gleeson, the cast includes Harry Treadaway, Kelly Lynch, Jharrel Jerome, Mary- Louise Parker, Holland Taylor, BreedaWool andNancy Travis. The series was filmed in Charleston, S. C., which stood in for Ohio.
English actor Treadway, who has played a genius psychopath in “Penny Dreadful,” takes on the serial killer in “Mr. Mercedes” and calls him “a unique, brilliantly drawn, complicated character.”