‘Mary Kills People’ is pivot for Lifetime
Doctor and mom helps her terminally ill patients die
In breaking through a crowded TV landscape, it’s hard to top the title of Lifetime’s new drama, Mary Kills People (Sunday, 10 ET/PT).
Mary Harris (Caroline Dhavernas, Hannibal) saves lives as an emergency-room doctor, but she moonlights as a Dr. Kevorkianstyle mercy killer, secretly helping a few terminally ill people end their lives. Partnering with a plastic surgeon (Richard Short) who’s lost his medical license, Mary thinks physician-assisted suicide moral, but she knows it’s illegal. Lifetime hopes the six-episode
Mary can build on the success of
UnREAL, which follows two female producers in the cutthroat world of a reality dating show. That series, which returns for Season 3 this summer, has helped Lifetime craft a more contemporary image after a reputation built on women-in-peril films. And Thursday, the network announced plans for a psychological thriller, YOU, from top producer Greg Berlanti, based on Caroline Kepnes’ novel.
“Assisted death is a topic that’s timely, but it’s dealt with in such a poignant and complicated way,” says Lifetime programming chief Liz Gateley.
Mary, which features sex, romance and some comedic moments, fits Lifetime’s strategy “of wanting to find complicated but relatable characters. This show, ironically, has a more hopeful outlook, even though it’s about assisted death,” says Gateley.
The network mixes character drama and real-world issues in upcoming film Flint, which follows women seeking justice after the revelation of the city’s drinking-water crisis. But Lifetime still nods to its sensational past with an upcoming film about the Menendez murders and last year’s remake of cheesy classic Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?, with Tori Spelling and James Franco.
On Mary, Dhavernas says her character’s work is as provocative as the title, with just a few states having legalized physician-assisted suicide. “How many people have had to be by their parents or a loved one and see them suffer? It’s such a complicated thing and very sensitive,” she says.
Although Mary’s side job is extraordinary, she leads a familiar life as a divorced mom with two daughters, one of whom is getting disturbingly close to discovering her secret. As a young female physician, she contrasts sharply with the late Jack Kevorkian.
“There was something so interesting about Mary secretly ending someone’s life and then in the next scene, she’s going to her daughter’s dance recital,” says creator Tara Armstrong.
She makes mistakes. She jeopardizes the venture when she makes sexual overtures to a strapping but terminally ill young man (Jay Ryan). “She’s done this well and nothing ’s gone wrong, up until the point we meet her,” Armstrong says. “Then it all starts to unravel. Mary makes some questionable decisions, like sleeping with one of her patients. As women, we’re told we have to be perfect, but we’re very not perfect. We do things that don’t always make sense.”