Mare of Easttown: Kate Winslet returns to the small screen in small town murder mystery
Mare is either related to or has volatile personal history with everyone in Easttown. (Supplied: HBO/Binge)
At the end of the first episode of Mare of Easttown, Kate Winslet sucks on her vape while staring at a tattered missing person poster on a dark cold night on the outskirts of Philadelphia.
Winslet is almost unrecognisable in a drab hoodie and sensible coat, untamable flyaways of what remains of a cheap blonde dye job now being pushed out by her dark roots, wearing trauma in the lines of her deeply furrowed brow.
Winslet's performance propels this HBO miniseries — directed by Craig Zobel (The Leftovers) — elevating it from formulaic crime drama to something more gripping, and imbuing the often tragic story with unexpected moments of lightness and humour.
OK, what's the story?
Winslet plays Mare (short for Marianne and not to be mistaken for 'mayor') Sheehan, a hard-bitten detective investigating the disappearances and murder of several young women in her small town.
"There's murder, there's secrets, there's grudges, but most of all, there's a lot of beer, cheese sandwiches and a very specific Philly accent," says Stop Everything!'s Beverley Wang. (Supplied: HBO/Binge)
But Mare — an ex-high school basketball star grappling with her own tragedies — is either related to or has a volatile history with pretty much everyone in Easttown.
Despite those entanglements, she pushes (or at some points limps) on; this is a woman who won't even blink after a disgruntled neighbour lobs a gallon of milk through her living room window, she's too determined to finish the hoagie at hand.
Where is Easttown?
While there is a real Easttown in Pennsylvania, USA, the show is set in a fictional town in Delaware County, southwest of Philadelphia.
Series creator Brad Ingelsby (who wrote the 2020 feature film The Way Back) grew up in Delco and has imagined a working-class town ravaged by the opioid crisis, where teen pregnancy appears to be the norm (Mare herself is a grandmother in her 40s) rather than a rarity.
Ingelsby told Black Girl Nerds that he began writing the series in 2018 when he was "feeling like we were in a dark time in this country", and that he aimed to portray mental illness and the opioid crisis with empathy.
What's with the accent?
Winslet worked with her long-term dialect coach to master the Philly accent, but told the LA Times: "It is absolutely up there amongst the top two hardest dialects I've ever done."
South Australian-based voice and dialect coach Nick Curnow explains that this accent is part of a mid-Atlantic group of dialects that includes Baltimore, New Jersey and Atlantic City.
In contrast to much of American English which has a cot-caught merger (where those two words, and words like them, will sound the same), a diphthong creates a cot-caught split, making those words sound distinct in the Philly accent.
The dialect also has a complex split short-A system, which means the 'a' in 'dad' and 'sad' are pronounced differently.
"[But] it's not intuitive which words are going to shift and change — which is one of the things that makes [this accent] tricky to achieve," says Curnow.
The Philly accent also has a distinct 'oh' and something called 'Canadian raising'. (Supplied: HBO/Binge)
He says there are not many good on-screen examples of the Philly accent.
"[But] an accent isn't just about the phonetic sounds, it's about finding a whole voice that represents that culture and society, and this [Winslet's performance] is a wonderful example."
Kate Winslet! On the small screen! How long has it been?
It's been almost 10 years since Mildred Pierce (another HBO miniseries) won Winslet an Emmy.
Australian heartthrob Guy Pearce also bagged an Emmy for that series, and he reunites with Winslet in Easttown, playing Richard Ryan, a literature professor and love interest.
Pearce isn't the only Australian in the cast: Angourie Rice (Ladies in Black) plays Mare's teenage daughter Siobhan.
Loading...Who else is in the Easttown cast?
Siobhan and Mare live with Mare's mother (Jean Smart) and grandson. Her ex-husband (David Denman) lives just next door with his fiancee (Kate Arrington).
Evan Peters (American Horror Story, Pose) plays Colin Zabel, a detective newly assigned to Mare's beat and Cailee Spaeny (Devs) plays doomed teen mother Erin McMenamin.
The series was filmed in suburban Philadelphia, but the shoot was shut down for six months by COVID-19. (Supplied: HBO/Binge)
There's also Mare's old basketball teammates Lori (Julianne Nicholson), Beth (Chinasa Ogbuagu) and Dawn (Enid Graham) — whose daughter's unsolved disappearance haunts the detective.
Dead or missing girls, a small town detective, haven't we seen this all before?
Yes!
The small town murder mystery genre that began with Twin Peaks in 1990, has since become dominated by female-led crime dramas (Happy Valley, Top of the Lake, Sharp Objects) and Nordic Noir (Bordertown, The Valhalla Murders, Trapped).
Beverley Wang from Stop Everything! says the show hits predictable crime drama notes: "[But] I'm not saying that to sledge Mare of Easttown, I think there is something to be said for the satisfaction of giving the audience everything that they want and then some."
Ingelsby says: "I hope when you get to the end of the show, you'll feel differently, that it wasn't a "trope show" about the 'dead white girl' ... I hope that we subverted that expectation, but only time will tell."
So it might be a tad predictable, but what do the reviews say? Is it any good?
Four episodes into the series, The Screen Show's Jason Di Rosso said: "The murder mystery is not really what's most interesting in Mare of Easttown.
"Ingelsby excels with character, not with plot, and the show is really good when characters commit staggering errors in judgment, trip over their lies and generally find themselves exposed."
Di Rosso describes Winslet's turn as Mare as "virtuosic" and says it's "one of the best shows on television at the moment".
Craig Mathieson in the Sydney Morning Herald writes that "Mare of Easttown is a show so lived in, so understanding of the grind that people can tell themselves is simply a routine, that it transcends the police procedural it identifies as".
The New York Times' TV critic Mike Hale, while admiring Winslet's performance, was critical of how the series plays to "the tradition of Middle American miserabilism ... nearly every character in the crowded cast is tragic to some degree".
Yes, this all does sound kind of miserable...
It is, but there's also lighter moments, including the relationship between Mare and her mother, Zabel's crush on Mare, and Siobhan's love life.
Angourie Rice told Jason Di Rosso: "I loved watching her [Winslet] work, she brought so much dedication every single day to set." (Supplied: HBO/Binge)
Rice told The Screen Show: "Despite all the crazy things going on in Easttown, Siobhan still manages to find a bit of lightness and a bit of hope and excitement in a new relationship.
"The reason why I love the show so much, and why I think it's so compelling is that it's about community, and you really care about these people, and you care about their relationships."
Sure, but who killed Erin McMenamin??
Even if we did know — as if we'd tell you.
What we will say is that silver fox Richard Ryan (Pearce) does feel deeply suspicious.
Truly suspect. (Supplied: HBO/Binge)
Where can I watch it?
Five of the seven-episode series are now available on Binge. The series also airs on Mondays on Foxtel's Fox Showcase channel.