The new Mare Of Easttown? Sorry, but it’s not even close
American Rust Sky Atlantic, Sunday ★★★★★
Paddy And Christine McGuinness: Our Family And Autism BBC1, Wednesday ★★★★★
My best advice to you today: beware the ‘new’ anything. The Wheel Of Time was billed as ‘the new Game Of Thrones’. It wasn’t. Every Scandi-noir since The Killing has been billed as ‘the new The Killing’. They never are. Now American Rust is being billed as ‘the new Mare Of Easttown’. And it isn’t. In its dreams, you might even add.
American Rust is a crime thriller set in one of those Pennsylvanian towns where unemployment is high, the marriages are broken and the colours are so dingy it looks as if it could all do with a good power wash.
The opening scene introduced us to a depressed police chief, Del Harris (Jeff Daniels), meticulously grinding, chopping and weighing out his meds (prescription ones, but everyone in this town is on something or other), until the camera scans the room and lands on a photograph of him in soldier’s uniform, which is handy. Now we know he’s a war veteran. This scene lasts four minutes and is so unrelentingly bleak that you’ll want to flee this place too.
Del is laconic, dry and seems emotionally exhausted. He cuts an isolated figure, particularly given that all the other men in town are either rednecks with rifles or bitter, hard-drinking old fellas overdue a stroke.
The only hopeful aspect to his life is a possible romance with a single mum (Maura Tierney) who works in a sweatshop sewing factory, which seems to be the sole going concern, apart from the bars, and is overwhelmed by financial worries.
She has a son, Billy (Alex Neustaedter), who is super-good-looking (all the young people are). A one-time football star who did not take up a college scholarship, he has now taken up drifting, drinking beer and car-park fisticuffs. Then a dead body is found in the rusting, decaying old mill. Did Billy commit murder? More pertinently, do we care?
Not much. Do we care that, if he did, Del is toying with his own moral compass by doing his best to cover it up? Not much. This lacks the humanity of Mare, the wit of Mare, and all those characters who were offbeat rather than clichés. It also has plot holes aplenty. Wouldn’t your mum, who is so stretched she was due to be evicted, notice if you suddenly trucked up in swanky new trainers?
It launched with two episodes, and I’ve awarded it two stars for Daniels and Tierney, who are always watchable, whatever, but Mare is the one you want. If you haven’t yet watched, it’s now on Amazon (and available on DVD). You’ll have to pay, but it’s the way to go. Meanwhile, I read a fashion headline the other day that declared that ‘black is the new black’. And now I’m confused. Following my own guidance, is the old black better? I can’t work it out, so will just leave that with you.
Paddy And Christine McGuinness: Our Family And Autism wasn’t billed as the new anything, which had to be a good start. This was tender, affecting, informative and took an unexpected twist at the end when Chris
tine, who has appeared on The Real Housewives Of Cheshire, was diagnosed with autism herself. I didn’t see that coming.
Paddy – otherwise the co-presenter of Top Gear, which still limps on – and Christine have three children, aged eight and under. They don’t sleep, are extraordinarily fussy about food and have meltdowns over bright lights or loud noises. A day out can be ruined by a hand-dryer in a public toilet.
The family had spent a lot of time inside with the curtains drawn, as it was easier. It wasn’t until Christine’s mum said something that they realised that not all children are like this.
They spoke honestly. Paddy buried himself in work. ‘I wanted to shake him,’ said Christine, ‘and say: “Just get on with it – it’s not a big deal”, but how awful to live in a house with children you wish didn’t wish have this condition.’
Paddy was, initially, in denial, and then ended up being treated for depression. ‘I used to think I was the last person in the world who would have depression,’ he said.
He goes on his own journey, while Christine meets Simon Baron-Cohen, the foremost autism expert at Cambridge University. She opened up about her own life, her own fussiness around food, how she once barely left the house for eight years, her difficulty making friends and how, ideally, she’d live in a clean white box. She had, she said, been ‘masking’ all this for years. She was relieved to have the diagnosis. ‘I now know I’m not mad.’
Paddy is still sometimes tormented – when he asks his son, Leo, if he loves Daddy, he always says he does. ‘But can he understand that? Do our children understand how much they are loved?’ Paddy asks.
I can’t answer that but we did see how much they are loved.
‘There is nothing wrong with our children. Everyone else just needs to understand,’ said Christine at the end. ‘Totally,’ said Paddy. He also said that ‘the kids have won the lottery with Christine. You couldn’t wish for a better mum.’ He wept. And so did I.