‘Mare of Easttown’: Kate Winslet Takes a Bite Out of Crime - Rolling Stone

The new HBO mystery miniseries Mare of Easttown begins with establishing shots of its titular location in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Created by Brad Ingelsby (whose Ben Affleck movie The Way Back was also quite glum) and directed by Craig Zobel (The Leftovers), the series is well-acted and can at times be gripping, but it seems happiest when it’s wallowing in the suffering of Mare and everyone she knows.

This is a very familiar setup if you watch a lot of TV crime drama, with the insider-outsider dynamic between Mare and Zabel almost exactly like the Olivia Colman-David Tenant setup in the great U.K.

Aside from occasional scenes where Mare goes on dates with college professor Richard (Guy Pearce, in a reunion of Winslet’s last HBO project, Mildred Pierce), she’s in cheap, baggy clothes, with minimal makeup.

(Mare naturally has strong recommendations for the best place in town to find each.) Her face is perpetually sour, and not just because Winslet has been publicly candid about her difficulty mastering the infamous “Delco” (Delaware County) accent, where “water” sounds like “wooder” and every long “o” will make you question the life choices that brought you to hearing it.

She finds other ways to convey just how tired Mare is of what her life has become, and the lack of vanity goes well beyond skin-deep.

The question remains whether suffering with Mare by proxy is noble or masochistic.

As has been the case lately with HBO mysteries, critics weren’t given the finale, so I can’t speak to how satisfying the solution to the case is, nor to any closure, or lack thereof, regarding the familial and romantic entanglements in which Mare finds herself.

It’s not as punishing a slog as last spring’s bit of HBO awards bait, I Know This Much Is True — the larger ensemble (Smart’s delightful reaction shots especially) and the twisty narrative make Mare far more propulsive — but it often conflates misery with profundity