Mare of Easttown (2021)

 

Rating: ★★★★ 

Follows the life of a middle-aged, divorced detective Mary-Ann, or just Mare, played incredibly by Kate Winslet as a series of serious crimes bewitch their small town. Missing young girls and murders are those crimes, and Mare is still fresh off dealing with the suicide of her eldest child. Lots of bleak you might think, and fair enough, since this kind of revives the small American town family despair atmosphere in some of the miniseries we've gotten from HBO recently such as Amy Adams' wonderful turn in Sharp Objects (2018) and the more underwhelming I Know This Much Is True (2020). Yet, there's so much lighter moments of comedy and raw love and emotion weaved into the show as well.

The writing is tremendous for the first 4 episodes when the stage is still being set for these characters, their lives and relations with one another. Not only does every single episode end on a cliffhanger, but every single minute of those 4 episodes are absolutely entrancing underscored with its drama and mystery beats. The show starts taking a few steps down from episode 5 up until the final 7th episode. I did not particularly like the direction it was going with resolving the mysteries behind the various crimes, and similarly I thought the writers were getting a bit too death and grief friendly. Mare's arc is done justice, but all the resolutions around her felt a bit swift and cursory. Therefore the show functions best as a character study, which it is primarily going off the focus and title of the show even if it plays around with the word 'mare', as in nightmare, which is also done justice for the most part.