Mr. Mercedes

Mr. Mercedes‘ pacing likely won’t do the series any favors with the weekly crowd, but stick with it and you’ll find a fascinating spin on genre conventions packed to the brim with smart character drama and uniformly excellent performances.

Kelley has made Janey Patterson, as played by Mary-Louise Parker, into a romantic interest for Hodges. This fix is not only needless--that’s one reason Taylor’s Ida exists, as she did in King’s novel: to provide Hodges with some intimate comfort--but it seems both less believable. ... Putting that aside, Mr. Mercedes is awfully good.

Fans of Mr. King's Bill Hodges Trilogy might wonder how a mostly internal cat-and-mouse game between Brady and Bill, a retired police detective with too much time (and drink) on his hands, is played out over 10 episodes. Very well, as it happens, and to chilling effect.

The 10-episode Mr. Mercedes isn’t a horror story. King’s tales are generally known for capturing middle-class angst, and the series has creepily translated that to the screen.

Mr. Mercedes is premium-unleaded nightmare fuel right out of the gate, without even a touch of the strange or supernatural.

David E. Kelley has delivered another powerful adaptation on the heels of his Emmy-nominated Big Little Lies for HBO. In the first four episodes made available for preview, he does justice to Bill Hodges, on e of King's most colorfully compelling heroes in ages. [7-20 Aug 2017, p.16]

Mr. Mercedes is a fine example of something that has been less frequent over the years--an effective Stephen King adaptation carried by strong performances and smart writing choices.

Mr. Mercedes isn't prestige-class pulp, but it's a quality star vehicle fueled with enough poignancy to make it worth the ride. [11 Aug 2017, p.46]

Most of all, the writing is what really drives Mr. Mercedes. The naturalistic pacing and character development provide a superior cast with more than enough fuel for a gripping ride.

Gleeson does a first-rate job with a character we’ve seen before, the tormented cop who plunges into a battle where he’s seemingly outflanked and outgunned. Treadaway is suitably troubling as a kid who represses such waves of rage and frustration that we don’t doubt it could explode somewhere. That the causes of his rage play as clichés doesn’t make him less menacing, though it makes the larger story less than subtle. Call it a solid campfire yarn.

It’s familiar stuff that Kelley could adapt in his sleep--The Practice never seemed to run out of charismatic serial killers who always managed to hoodwink poor stupid Bobby Donnell until after he was suckered into getting them an acquittal--but the details, and the performances, are all well-drawn enough to make it a pleasing rendition of this classic rock tune.

Mr. Mercedes is a slow-burn cop show, the kind of program that sometimes drags its feet a bit too much for its own good--I think there was probably a great eight-episode series instead of this good ten-episode one--but the rhythm allows for character-driven performances from its talented cast.

It’s smartly paced, with stellar performances and assured direction, and yet it feels curiously stodgy, with the emotional beats never landing quite hard enough and the action and humor scattershot.

The problem with Mr. Mercedes, at least early on, is a version of Netflix bloat: it dawdles, and through the first four episodes it feels like the story is still getting started. One of the most important characters from the novel, a woman who joins in Bill’s investigation, has yet to appear. So far Mr. Kelley has put together a decent character study, but whether he’ll pull off a hard-boiled thriller remains a mystery.

While Mr. Mercedes exhibits signs of improvement--the series’ resonance strengthens once Mary-Louise Parker (finally) shows up--the drama comes off as an unappealing combination of Stephen King’s most ghastly horror moments mashed into a hard-boiled detective story.