Watch TV with Paul Flynn
WHO DOESN’T LOVE Kate Winslet? In the intervening 20-something years since she swayed heroically at the bow of the Titanic, Leo whispering in one ear, Celine in the other, she’s remained a flawless constant at the top of the British star system. She looks flawless while feeling oddly like a sympathetic neighbour. She makes interesting work without ever feeling try-hard.
Which makes Mare Of Easttown, her new HBO drama, something of a curio. It might be the first time Winslet has stepped quite so dramatically out of her lane. In a plaid shirt, with six-inch roots, walking with a limp, profanities littering every sentence she utters when not swigging from an open bottle of Rolling Rock (which is frankly not very often), this is a Winslet we have not seen before. Are we fully prepped for the all new blue-collar Kate, resident cop of nowheresville, rustbelt USA? I spent most of the first episode slack-jawed at this wild new career U-turn. When you think of Kate Winslet, a mid-market take on The Wire is hardly the first dramatic home that springs to mind.
She plays Mare Sheehan, an Irishamerican Pennsylvania detective who says ‘awesome’ an awesome amount. There is a lot of plot to digest in that first hour. A missing girl, teenage beating, frenemy with cancer, priest cousin, bearded ex-husband, his new fiancée, 25-year-old basketball backstory, several children including one able-bodied, stroppy lesbian with a rad undercut and another, perky and disabled, being picked on at school, grandchild, new professor love interest and lots of talk of what a dump they all live in vie for attention.
Because of the frantic weight and pace of storylines, there is a ton of expositional dialogue to swear her reactive way through. This is a frank, cranky new accent added to the already voluminous Winslet almanac, which – warning – won’t be to everybody’s taste. Somewhere between a noir police thriller and roving expedition through clashing family values, Mare Of Easttown feels like it might be the first Winslet project to get a bit of ire from her natural audience. For this alone, she should be applauded. It’s great to see someone at her stratospheric layer of fame take an actual risk.
Begins 19 April, Sky Atlantic