MARE OF EASTTOWN: Great Crime Drama, Excellent Kate Winslet

Mare of Easttown is a series with a perfect start – I wrote in my review of the first episode of the HBO series. Today, after watching the entire season, I can write that it is probably the best series of 2021. My enthusiasm did not fade after the second, third, or fourth episode, and in the meantime, I managed to get a few family members and friends interested in it. I do not know anyone who was not captivated by Mare of Easttown, and no wonder – there are many reasons for it: a polished script, a perfectly chosen cast that reaches the heights of acting, flesh-and-blood characters whose struggles and pain never leave the viewer indifferent.

What is Mare of Easttown about? The residents of Easttown, Pennsylvania, still remember the mysterious disappearance of their young neighbor Katie Bailey a year ago. The lack of any clues as to what might have happened to the girl drives her mother to despair and puts constant pressure on the local police department and Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet), who is leading the case.

The detective is cynical and keeps others at a distance, while dealing with her own problems – unprocessed grief after her son’s suicide, raising her grandson Drew (Izzy King), a difficult relationship with her live-in mother Helen (Jean Smart), and an ex-husband Frank (David Denman) who lives next door and is marrying his new partner.

When one morning the body of Erin McMenamin (Cailee Spaeny), a teenage mother raising her son alone, is found in Easttown, Mare has one more hard nut to crack. Who killed the young girl? The investigation is made no easier by the fact that in Easttown everyone knows everyone.

At first glance, Mare of Easttown seems like a small-town crime story with a rich layer of drama, one of many, a classic whodunnit. All the elements of the genre are here – a dead young girl, a grim, gray town where everyone knows who, what, and with whom, a bitter cop who cannot get along with the partner assigned to the case, past traumas and unhealed wounds.

We know all this from series such as The Killing (2011–2014) or Broadchurch (2013–2017), so it is easy to accuse Craig Zobel (The Hunt, Compliance) and Brad Ingelsby (Out of the Furnace, The Way Back) of being formulaic and repeating well-known patterns.

Mare of Easttown, however, is something more than an ordinary crime story. The series goes beyond the classic thriller structure, and the criminal mystery blends smoothly and naturally with a moving drama and a family saga, often allowing for laughter and comedic catharsis. This would not have been possible without an excellently written script.

The world-building and set design are so authentic that we immerse ourselves in Easttown without hesitation, take it for granted, and let ourselves be completely carried away by the characters’ stories. Because what makes this HBO series stand out from other similar productions are the complex, perfectly written characters we get to know better with each episode, whose emotions and motivations feel believable.

The script and the casting direction (thanks to Avy Kaufman) go hand in hand here with the actors’ craft. The spotlight, of course, is on Kate Winslet, painfully convincing as the wounded, emotionally closed-off Mare, becoming a perfectly imperfect and authentic female protagonist for our times. Her relationship with her mother, played by the brilliant Jean Smart, works as comic relief and could easily be turned into a sitcom.

Julianne Nicholson is absolutely superb as Mare’s friend – I had admired her already in Monos (2019) and The Outsider (2020), and with this performance she once again proves that she deserves the best roles and the highest acting honors.

Surprisingly, Evan Peters is also a pleasure to watch in a role so different from his previous repertoire – as the kind, calm detective Zabel. As for character development, I have only one complaint for the creators – completely sidelining, after a promising first episode, the character of Richard, Mare’s romantic interest, played by Guy Pearce. This feels particularly strange in a series where details play such a key role and no subplot is accidental.

Other than that, there is very little I could criticize. The ending of the series ties together all the threads and scattered clues, leaving no plot holes, which is often a flaw of similar crime dramas. In the moving and surprising finale, crime and drama intertwine, yet it is not the plot twist or the revelation of Erin’s killer that become most important. As in life, the crime mystery gives way to the here and now, and the emotionally scarred characters must learn to go on living, despite and against the tragedy. In the end, life goes on – for the detective solving the case, and for me, having to say goodbye to characters I had truly grown fond of.