Our Brendan is driving Mercedes to great success Pick of the week
NOT every screen adaptation of Stephen King’s work is guaranteed success but Mr Mercedes has the deck stacked in its favour because it has Brendan Gleeson in the lead role.
The Irish star plays former homicide detective Bill Hodges, who, two years after retiring, is still haunted by his last case – a massacre that left 16 people dead including a mother and her baby.
When the demented serial killer who rammed a car into a line of people at a jobs fair starts to taunt him by emailing him harrowing video footage of the carnage, he feels compelled to revisit the gruesome case.
Ex-cop Hodges decides to launch his own personal crusade to bring the psycho to justice before he can strike again – and he’s not averse to bending the law to do it.
Based on master storyteller King’s best-selling series, the TV adaptation is directed by Game of Thrones’ Jack Bender who executive produces along with David E Kelley, who was responsible for LA Law, Ally Mcbeal and Boston Legal among other smashes.
Top writer Dennis Lehane (The Wire, Gone Baby Gone and Mystic River) is also involved and explained how the team honoured King’s work yet put its own stamp on it.
He said: “I want to be very respectful of his material but, at the same time, I didn’t want to be reverential.
“That’s the exact same process that I expect when somebody adapts my work.
“I didn’t reach out to Stephen. I’d shoot him an email every now and then but it wasn’t like I would run things by him. I think that’s a recipe for disaster.”
But while there are heavyweights aplenty behind the camera it’s Gleeson’s performance that keeps audiences glued to this thriller.
His boozesoaked character is haunted by the fact he and his partner never closed the case and the forced idleness of retirement has left him restless and neurotic. In the first episode neighbour Ida (Holland Taylor) tells him: “Retirement messes with some people.”
His former partner detective Pete Dixon (Scott Lawrence) rubs salt in the wound and urges Hodges to find a hobby to occupy his mind.
He adds: “You get up every day now knowing you didn’t catch that perp, close that case, didn’t speak up for that victim. Find a goal… I don’t want to go to your funeral in six months.
“They’ll make me a pallbearer, and you’re too f***ing fat to carry.”
The conflicted role fits Gleeson like a glove, and his captive audience will be rooting for him all the way. Mr Mercedes starts on Tuesday on RTE One at 10.15pm.