‘Mr. Mercedes’ revs up
Detective, criminal face off in excellent ‘Mr. Mercedes’
10-part screen version of Stephen King thriller debuts Wednesday
If you’re a fan of Stephen King’s work looking to wash the bad taste of “The Dark Tower” out of your mouth, “Mr. Mercedes” arrives just in time. Actually, even if you’re not a fan of King’s work, the 10-part series, which debuts Wednesday, Aug. 9 on the Audience Network, is well worth watching.
Based on King’s well-received novel, the show is everything the disastrous “Dark Tower” movie is not: compelling, coherent and character-driven.
But scary? Not so much, at least not in the way King’s work often is — this is more of a detective mystery, with no vampires, evil clowns or resurrected corpses in sight. The evil at work here is not supernatural, but man-made. Truthfully, that’s probably scarier.
The series, written and produced by David E. Kelley (“Ally McBeal,” “Big Little Lies”), begins as the novel does, with a genuinely disturbing crime. As scores of people, some of whom we get to know briefly, line up in the pre-dawn darkness for a job fair, a Mercedes drifts up. A Mercedes at a job fair, someone sniffs. Wow, things really have gotten bad.
They’re about to get worse. The driver revs the engine, pulls on a clown mask and slams the car into gear, gaining speed until he has mowed down much of the crowd. By the time he’s done, 16 people are dead, including an infant. The initial response by police is that the driver must have lost control.
Bill Hodges knows better. Played brilliantly by Brendan Gleeson, Hodges is a straight-talking Irish import (details are changed from the book to accommodate Gleeson’s essential accent) who knows from the start that this was a deliberate act of horrific violence and insanity.
But he can’t solve the case. The story skips ahead two years and Bill is retired, unhappily so, the still-unsolved case proving to be his undoing. Now he’s drinking too much, listening to albums, watching TV, the picture of ennui passed out in a recliner.
And then he starts getting e-mails. They’re obviously from the killer; not only do they include information that was never released to the public, they also include stomach-turning, insidethe-car footage from the slaughter, mocking Bill and his inability to bring the killer to justice. They’re meant to send the depressive man over the edge into suicide.
Instead, they awaken him. Bill, quietly and without the knowledge of the authorities (at least at first), begins working on the case again.
This is not a whodunit in the traditional sense. We know who did it, if Bill does not: Brady (Harry Treadaway, in a role originally meant for the late Anton Yelchin). He’s a computer whiz, working unhappily at an electronics store, where his officious boss (Robert Stanton) belittles him and his co-worker Lou (Breeda Wool). In a classic King touch, he works a second job as the driver of an ice-cream truck.
Things are worse at home, where he lives in a queasy, Oedipal relationship with his constantly drinking and smoking mother (Kelly Lynch). But it’s in the basement where he finds his purpose. That’s where, working in front of banks of computer screens, he terrorizes Bill (as he had other people involved in the case).
Supporting characters are good, in particular Holland Taylor as Bill’s neighbor,
The evil at work here is not supernatural, but man-made. Truthfully, that’s probably scarier.
who is interested in a kind of friendswith-benefits relationship with Bill (she makes him look at nude selfies), who doesn’t share her interest.
But the story really boils down to a psychological duel between the two men, Bill and Brady. Treadaway is appropriately creepy, and scary, as Brady. He’s quiet, if sinister, but when pushed too far he becomes a monster (again, not a literal one, despite this being a King story).
Gleeson is terrific. While, as with most of these kinds of characters, his gruff exterior masks something a little softer inside, he makes the cold, embittered part of his personality believable. He had a purpose and he lost it, and now that purpose is returning in an all-ornothing game.
I’m something of a King apologist (and I’m aware his reputation has grown). I’ve read “Salem’s Lot” about 10 times, as much for the depiction of smalltown life as the satisfyingly horrifying vampire story, and his book on writing is as good as you’ll find. But I’m also aware of his limitations — shortcuts, mostly, an over-reliance on pop-culture lingo and trends (that doesn’t always age well). They’re not in evidence here.
Kelley probably has something to do with that, but the format also suits the work. We have time to get to know Bill and Brady, and the world created here. It makes “Mr. Mercedes” a compelling series, a real summer treat.