Artwork by Michael DiMilo
Review by Geoff Carter
HBO’s limited series Mare of Easttown is a compelling seven-part thriller that stretches the boundaries of expectations for the criminal drama genre. Mare Sheehan, Eastown’s veteran police detective, is not a typical TV cop. Although skilled, conscientious, and devoted to duty, Mare is also acerbic, brutally honest, and has–not surprisingly–alienated half the town. A native of Easttown, her commitment to her town and to her vision of justice is driven by her own deep sense of guilt. Besides justice—and beyond justice, Mare is constantly seeking redemption.
Easttown, Pennsylvania is a typical American small town. Many of the residents have lived there their entire lives, and everyone knows everyone else (and has for years). Friendships, grudges, and secrets survive for a long time—usually well past their primes. But while there is a a certain amount of comfort there, life seems hard in Easttown. Residents there—as in all small towns—struggle with illness, personal relationships, and their own personal demons. Suicide, divorce, and addiction seem to be intricately woven into the Easttown experience. It is—in short—not a very happy place.
As the series opens, Detective Mare Sheehan has been ordered to reopen an unsolved case, the year-long disappearance of a local girl—the daughter of a high school classmate. Frustrated by her failure to solve the case—and her ex-husband’s engagement party (he lives across the backyard from Mare)—Mare soon is confronted with a new challenge: the discovery of the body of Erin McMenamin, another local girl.
Mare begins to follow a convoluted trail involving the father of Erin’s child, Erin’s alcoholic father, and the local clergy, all the while trying to juggle the demands of her own fragmented family. She is still relatively close (physically and emotionally) to her ex-husband, even as they try to recover from the trauma of their son’s death. Mare still lives with her shrewish mother Helen (Jean Smart), her precocious teenage daughter Siobhan (Angourie Rice), and her 4-year-old grandson Drew (Izzy King) whose biological mother—straight out of rehab—wants to regain full custody.
Faced with the pressures of home and her job, Mare is still able to lean on Lori Ross (Julianna Nicholson) one of her best friends from high school, who just happens to be Erin’s (the dead girl’s) aunt, for moral support. When Mare’s boss, Chief Carter (John Douglas Thompson) informs her that Colin Zabel (Evan Peters) a hotshot county detective will be assisting her in the investigation, Mare informs him in no uncertain terms that any assistance is unnecessary. The Chief insists and Zabel stays. Complicating all this is Richard Ryan (Guy Pearce), a writer and college professor who becomes (over her own misgivings) Mare’s new romantic interest.
Out of this tangle of interpersonal histories, family strife, chronic sorrow, and mid-life disappointments a compelling mystery emerges. When another girl disappears, Mare and Zabel investigate, following the new trail to a surprising destination and a shocking outcome. Meanwhile, Erin’s murder investigation takes Mare deep into an intertwined tangle of family ties, illicit relationships, and long-standing jealousies, exposing both crimes of the flesh and the heart.
Brad Inglesby, the writer and director of Mare of Easttown, has created a believable and fitting small-town setting for his protagonist’s struggles. It is a comfortable yet bleak place, full of old friends and stale memories. Having grown up in a Pennsylvania suburb, Easttown seems to a place Inglesby knows intimately.
Kate Winslet does a fine job portraying Mare Sheehan, bringing a brittle toughness and weary determination to a wounded parent, still grieving over the loss of her son. While she does not hesitate to rebuke family and friends for their transgressions, Mare’s most profound anger is aimed at herself, and when the investigation takes her to a deeply personal place, she is finally able to begin to forgive herself.
As Mare’s best friend Lori, Julianna Nicholson conveys a winning portrayal of a good-natured wife and mother doing her best to protect her friend and her family—even when the two are at odds. You can’t help but to like her. As Helen, Mare’s mom, Jean Smart is perhaps a little too predictable as the plucky mother. At times, her eccentricities—and the mother-daughter repartee—seem a little too contrived and cute. As Siobhan, Mare’s daughter, Angourie Rice provides a nice mix of intelligence, awareness, and empathy to her character. In some ways, she seems to be the most mature person of the bunch.
The character of Detective Zabel (Evan Peters) is not quite as believable. He is an expert cop, a hired gun sent down to assist Mare, but his boyish nervousness and anxiety undermine those expectations. Peter’s portrayal is perhaps too earnest and sincere; it doesn’t seem to fit the character.
But all in all, Mare of Eastown is a compelling crime drama. Drawn into the tangle of emotional struggles and family dramas of a small town, the series guides us through the emotional journey of a woman torn by guilt, grief, and pain as she uncovers deadly familial secrets in a small town focused as much on the past as it is the present.
As Mare discovers, when you dig deeply enough, no one is innocent. Everyone is implicated. Everyone is guilty—or should be.