TV Review - Mare of Easttown

Brad Ingelsby created this series. He turned 41 this year and has previously written six feature films. I haven't seen all of those features, but I have seen half of them. I've enjoyed those films for the most part. My favorite from Ingelsby is The Dynamiter (2012), which didn't really have a plot. It was more of a character study and a mood piece about a particular area or slice of the United States. His other films though have had more of a plot with the exception of The Way Back (2020), which leaned largely as a character study too. His film Run All Night (2015) was less that and was mostly plot as it was an action flick that had small bursts of violence.

This series seems to combine a lot of the elements that Ingelsby has utilized before. It's a character study. It's a mood piece about a slice of the United States, specifically the suburbs of Philadelphia and what is Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It also has a subplot, such as in his Out of the Furnace (2013) script that results in bursts of violence, but, instead of male aggression exhibited upon each other, here it's a murder mystery where there is violence visited upon vulnerable women. Yet, it's not as lurid as it could have been, given some of the subject matter it brings up.

Kate Winslet (Contagion and Titantic) stars as Mare Sheehan, a detective for the Easttown police. She's divorced. The reason probably stems from the fact that her eldest son died, as a result of various issues that he had, mental ones and also substance abuse issues. She still has a teenage daughter that she's raising, but she's also raising her grandson, the son of her son. Her mother has moved into her house to help her raise her grandson, given that the mother of her grandson was a drug addict who wasn't able to raise the boy. All of this has made Mare a cynical and bitter person. We see that personality come through in her job, which frustrates her at times with regard to a missing person's case that's still unsolved, as well as other cases that frequent her desk.

Things take a turn when a young woman, a veritable teenage girl is found shot dead in a nearby creek. Pressure is intensified to solve this murder because it comes in the wake of a case involving another teenage girl who disappeared about a year ago. When a third girl also goes missing, some suggest that it could be the makings of a serial killer. The real question is if the culprit is some monstrous force or if the explanation is a result of a community and town, buckling under its own socioeconomic forces.

Evan Peters (American Horror Story and Pose) co-stars as Colin Zabel, a detective who works for Delaware County. It's perhaps been a while since the local police have had to deal with such a brutal murder, so Colin is sent to assist. However, he's obviously younger and less experienced than Mare. He's sent though because he was the lead detective on a murder case that was solved recently, so people think that maybe he can be a lucky charm with this case. He's not so sure and even doubts himself. He even seems more eager to learn from Mare than anything else. He also starts to be attracted to her romantically.

In the first episode, the series does a great job of introducing Mare and the range of characters that surround her, such as her family, their neighbors and a lot of the issues that will be explored. Those include the mundane and even frustrating aspects of being a small-town cop. The trauma and grief that can come from losing someone to addiction is also explored, which is of course related to the opioid epidemic that's gotten more attention over the past few years. We get the trauma and grief from losing someone to violence. Such is the case with the family of the murdered or missing girls. It's also the case with Mare herself and the loss of her father who was a cop. We also see that in small towns certain dreams die hard or often potential isn't ever fully realized. One example comes from the fact that Mare used to play basketball and perhaps wanted to use that to go further but never did. We see it in the case of Colin as well.

Angourie Rice (Spider-Man: Far From Home and The Nice Guys) also co-stars as Siobhan Sheehan, the daughter to Mare. She's an artist, an aspiring filmmaker. She's actually making a film about her brother, as a way to deal with his death. She's also preparing to go to college. Currently, she's dating a musician in a garage band. What's unique is that the musician is a girl. Siobhan is a lesbian or is a person with same-sex attraction. She provides an aspect of a death of a family, as she represents the sibling coping with the aftermath by trying to be the good child. It also provides a glimpse of a girl exploring or expressing her same-sex attraction in this kind of town, but the series doesn't do much that goes beyond being a cute thing.

Obviously, a big theme in this series is that of parenthood. We have Mare dealing with the loss of her father, as she has a contentious but loving relationship with her mother, played by Jean Smart (Watchmen and Fargo). We have Mare not thinking herself a good parent, given what happened with her son and his death. We have the murdered girl, also being a parent herself, and the father of her baby being left with the baby and having to decide if he's going to be a father to it or not. A lot of struggles with parenthood and differing views of it swirl all throughout this series.

Rated TV-MA-LSV.

Running Time: 1 hr. / 7 eps.

Sundays at 10 PM on HBO.