Mare of Easttown

As the twists and turns of the cases are revealed, it becomes a show greater than the sum of its already considerable parts. By the time you get to the revelation at the end of the second episode, you become less stunned by the news itself than you are by the computation of what it will mean for all involved. Everything and everyone is real and you care about every tiny part. Wonderful.

Sterling drama. ... A seven-part series whose powers derive as much from its enthralling focus on that town and its society as from the unsteady life and career of its heroine, known simply as Mare, a police detective born and raised there. Kate Winslet’s eloquent command of the role is obvious from the outset. ... It’s a testament to the writing (Brad Ingelsby wrote the script) that no moment in this saga ever feels even remotely unreal.

It’s the first true must-see drama of 2021, an excellent ensemble piece that works as character study, murder mystery, and actor’s showcase. Finely detailed in both setting and character, it’s a tapestry of a mini-series, a piece that centers one of our best living actors while also providing rich, complex characters for an extended ensemble of fantastic performers.

Great acting can be contagious, and here it’s tucked into every dark corner and secret. You don’t just watch “Mare of Easttown.” You live in its shadows.

Winslet is phenomenal at carrying the spirit and theme of the show on her shoulders too. ... This poignant and human drama—compelling as all get out with its murder mystery too—suggests for all the L’s we take in life, we can still choose to live as if the past is the past and small, but meaningful victories are always within reach.

As the show progresses, it only gifts viewers more brilliant character moments, shocking reveals, and haunting performances. Clear your Sundays this spring for Mare of Easttown because it’s that damn addicting. ... Mare of Easttown‘s magic is that it evokes these classic crime dramas [Twin Peaks, Broadchurch and The Silence of the Lambs] while bringing something new: a raw authenticity that makes you realize that at the center of every murder mystery are human beings getting hurt.

Though it may sound pretty grim, Mare of Easttown never feels like overkill or "tragedy porn," as they say. Instead, sadly, it just feels nauseatingly realistic. ..... It's both a physically and emotionally demanding role, and the certifiably excellent Winslet delivers an Emmy-worthy performance if there ever was one.

"Mare of Easttown" is a riveting and compelling series. I devoured the five episodes I had access to and was ready for more.

Mare sets the scene so vividly that the murder mystery almost isn’t even necessary. These characters, and this town, are enough to command our attention. ... This slow burn may take a little time to heat up, but just give it a chance. It’s well worth it.

In fact, deceptively stodgy title notwithstanding, it is a poignant, richly observed, if occasionally over-the-top HBO crime drama. ... Easttown is not an ideal place. Mare is not an ideal detective or mom. But both have something more compelling than perfection going for them: they’re real.

But what starts as the familiar slow burn of those other shows—a close-knit community is rocked by a murder that a hardened local detective must investigate—quickly catches fire, becoming a powerful portrait of grief, trauma, and the devastating secrets buried in this claustrophobic town’s tangled web of relationships.

Like a blue-collar version of The Undoing, the red herrings and shocking twists pile on relentlessly. ... By the fifth hour, I was left as breathless as Mare. [12 - 25 Apr, p.10]

A brilliant, bitterly funny Kate Winslet digs deep as a small-town, Pennsylvania detective in HBO’s compulsively watchable crime series that is full of twists you won’t see coming. Emmy attention must be paid.

"Mare of Easttown" doesn't go so far as to reinvent the detective story, it does offer a version of the tale more nuanced and thoughtful than the vast majority of its peers. ... Its characters are deeply real and expertly drawn, its sense of place firmly established and specific, and its clues genuinely shocking. It's an intense and satisfying to watch, going to places your average murder mystery wouldn't aspire.

The series gets off to a somewhat sluggish start but by the end of the first hour, “Mare of Easttown” gets its hooks into viewers, building tension around the murder investigation that engulfs Mare’s life. Episode two ratchets up the mystery further as multiple suspects come into focus.

Mare stands out for its realistic depictions of this strength, highlighting not just the impressive resilience of its women, but the ways in which the need for this resilience takes its toll, both over time and in harsh, shattering moments.

As the series examines grief and regret as she strains to overcome both, it unearths rich subtext everyone should be able to appreciate.

Mare of Easttown worked best as a sorry portrait of backwater America, but (despite echoes of a grubbier, more depressing Big Little Lies) was far from style over substance. It was slow, but all the better for it.

Mare of Easttown is just a subtle, textured portrait of a place where some people are suffering, and a woman is doing her imperfect and insufficient best to help them.

Brad Inglesby's drama is tight, clever and non-cliched in its dialogue and the cast is strong, but there are some well-worn tropes.

Mare of Easttown is much easier to watch than I Know This Much Is True, Mark Ruffalo’s joyless HBO miniseries from last year, and much of that is down to its star. Mare’s undimmable despite the encompassing gloom. Thanks to her, Easttown feels surprisingly warm for a town full of dead teenagers.

Of the two series, "Happy Valley" is top-notch, whereas this is more of a muddle elevated by superb performances. That shouldn't count out what Winslet, Jean Smart and the other women at the heart of "Mare of Easttown" offer. The characters are the reason to stick with this show as opposed to the murder and missing persons cases, starting with Winslet's performance.

Winslet in a rich performance that never lets go. The series, created and written by Brad Ingelsby (“The Way Back,” “Our Friend”) flirts with melodramatic excess at points, as the number of local crises and misfortunes grows. But the acting — by Winslet and the strong ensemble around her — is compelling enough to make it all feel more tragic than soapy, more complex than overcooked.

There is nothing sensational here, but I watched five episodes in a row with growing interest and found little occasion to talk back to the screen. ... In a really good mystery, the journey is what matters, the scenery, the people you meet: the detective, the bystanders, the suspects, all but one or two of whom will turn out not to be the killer. And “Mare of Easttown” makes those other minutes feel well spent.

Dive bars and broad accents abound. In the midst of unearthing a domestic nightmare, Mare’s courage at confronting the demons of this town offer up a particularly satisfying kind of catharsis, where women paying attention to each other can save each other from the worst kind of bogeyman.

Small towns harbor big secrets in prestige TV, and so it is in Mare of Easttown, a showcase for Kate Winslet that resembles "Broadchurch" in the broad strokes, before establishing its own distinct personality. Slow to start, the limited series gains momentum while mostly providing Winslet a fine star vehicle a decade after her Emmy-winning turn in HBO's "Mildred Pierce."

The crime story has disturbing echoes of all too many series built around the murder of young women. What keeps “Mare of Easttown” watchable are the terrific actors, who make the most out of their characters, who are drawn with nuance and depth.

Running seven hours, “Mare of Easttown” often exchanges action for atmosphere. A few more cases could have pushed this along, but it does engage. Winslet never falters, making “Easttown” seem like the place she was born, raised and disappointed. Peters and Smart are great sparring partners but Mare is the deserving main attraction. Winslet is the reason.

One of Mare of Easttowns’s greatest assets is its thorough attention to detail, but occasionally that also works to its detriment. The show places importance on so many story lines and sidebars that some inevitably get shoved to the side without being satisfyingly resolved. ... But the series is so immersive and well-done in other ways that its flaws don’t detract from the experience.

Mare of Easttown is most compelling when it sticks to the Happy Valley model of illustrating how its titular character is both a product of and an outlier in her hometown — and noticeably flags when it hews closer to tropes ... And yet Ingelsby and Zobel eventually manage to cast their spell through masterful cliffhangers and jolting twists.

The achievement of Winslet’s performance is that for as much as Mare may seem like a victim, we come to believe she has it in her, perhaps more than ever before in her life, to be great.

The scene doesn’t have that easy catharsis of so many therapy-breakthrough “aha!” moments in so many series. It’s simply and powerfully real. Not all of “Mare of Easttown” feels that way. But it’s enough.

“Mare of Easttown” holds our interest throughout, thanks to showrunner/writer Brad Inglesby, the brilliant ensemble cast led by Winslet in one of the most resonant performances of her career — and also to the locale itself.

The series regularly introduces suspects and leads—from the short-tempered dad to the shady priest to secret journals—indulging the allure of armchair crime-solving while resisting neat resolutions. But the detective work is merely scaffolding for the show’s beguiling dive into Easttown’s psyche.

I don't know whether to credit the series for ambient atmosphere, or criticize it for so obviously hiding final twists in plain sight.

An ambitious attempt to do more than a routine crime show, Mare Of Easttown doesn’t always work, but it’s worth it for Winslet’s downbeat, complicated cop.

Mare mostly does well treading over territory as well-worn as the fictionalized Easttown itself, but without that extra creative spark that’s elevated similar projects like True Detective and Top of the Lake above the grim story at their hearts.

Winslet elevates everything, but “Mare of Easttown” needs some serious elevating out of its dreariness and familiarity. It’s certainly watchable but also predictable. Look elsewhere for light.

The cast is certainly a good one, and Winslet is too much of a pro not to make Mare worth watching, at least most of her time on screen. It's all the time in between that's the problem.

While it's somewhat exciting to try to guess the killer, the series wastes potential to dig into its characters and their relationships, and the landscape is the more lasting feeling after finishing the final episode. It just leaves you with a noticeably detached feeling of, "Okay, well that's done."