Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mare Of Easttown’ On HBO, Where Kate Winslet Plays An Eastern Pennsylvania Police Detective Longing To Solve A Vexing Murder

It’s often said that actors of Kate Winslet’s caliber can disappear into roles. But sometimes that isn’t the case. It usually happens when the actor is going way against type, or trying to adopt a regional accent that they struggle with. In the case of Mare Of Easttown, Winslet not only is playing against type as a rough-hewn small-town Pennsylvania police detective, she’s also going full in on the near-impossible Philadelphia/Delaware County accent. Does it work?

MARE OF EASTTOWN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of factory lights in the light of dawn. Shots of various houses, ranging from old shacks to equally old row houses, in the town of Easttown, PA. (In real life, Easttown is on the Main Line in Chester County, but for this show’s purposes, it’s in Delaware County, closer to Philly).

The Gist: Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) is called out of bed by a nearby senior citizen, wanting to report a prowler outside. She goes there and looks into it, but encourages her to call the station next time. When she gets into the station, her boss, Chief Carter (John Douglas Thompson), tells her that they’re being given a county detective to help her on the case of Katie Bailey (Caitlin Houlahan) a teen who’s been missing about a year. It’s a case that has dogged Mare because she just can’t find any evidence of what happened to her, and Katie’s mother Dawn (Enid Graham) is on the news looking for help.

Other issues she has to deal with: Her friend Beth Hanlon (Chinasa Ogbuagu) reports that her brother Freddie (Dominique Hanson) is breaking into her house to steal things to hock for drug money; Mare twists her ankle while chasing Freddie to his house, where the heat’s been turned off.

At home, where she lives with her mother Helen (Jean Smart), daughter Siobhan (Angourie Rice) and grandson Drew (Izzy King), she is the last one to find out that her ex-husband Frank (David Denman), who bought the house right behind hers after their divorce, is getting engaged to his girlfriend Faye (Kate Arrington). They’re all going to his house for an engagement party; Mar is annoyed about that, because she’ll be attending a halftime ceremony at her old high school celebrating the 25th anniversary of a miraculous Lady Hawk basketball championship. She’s “Miss Lady Hawk” because she made a miraculous last-second shot to give her team the title. Siobhan points out to her that she didn’t want anyone there, anyway.

She goes to the ceremony with best buddy Lori Ross (Julianna Nicholson), where she sees Beth, as well as Dawn Bailey, who was on the same team. She again tries to apologize and Lori is the go-between. At a bar afterwards, she meets Richard Ryan (Guy Pearce), an author who is new in town. They have a quickie at his place, and when he tries to ask her out, she shuts him down, saying her life is too complicated. He seems to be undeterred.

In the meantime, one of Siobahn’s classmates, Erin McMenamin (Cailee Spaeny), a teenage mother, has to deal with Brianna (Mackenzie Lansing) the threatening girlfriend of her baby’s father, Dylan (Jack Mulhern). But she’s looking forward to seeing an online date named Brandon. Only when she goes to the woods under the highway, where the rest of her class meets to smoke and drink, she finds out that it’s Brianna, Dylan and their buddies, who catfished her just to pound her for texting Dylan a non-baby text one vulnerable night.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Mare of Easttown has a lot of the same “small town hiding a lot of secrets” themes as shows like Broadchurch or Happy Valley.

Our Take: Written by Brad Ingelsby, Mare of Easttown has the makings of a great HBO mystery series. There’s a fantastic lead in Winslet, and with a first hour that does a great job of building the community around Mare. In a lot of ways, she seems to be the glue keeping Easttown from falling apart, but it also might just be that she grew up there and knows everybody. That goes a long way in helping her do her job, which is why the Bailey case has frustrated her so much.

Winslet is a fantastic actress, of course, but we still couldn’t get used to her playing a rough-around-the-edges police detective in a working-class town in Eastern Pennsylvania. She leans on the Philly/Delco accent so hard — she says “wodder” instead of “water”, for instance — she starts to sound darn near Canadian. All the credit for her attempting such a tough accent (Nicholson uses it, as well), but seeing her bite down on those words, limp around after twisting her ankle and do things like drink soda straight from the bottle just makes us think “Kate Winslet is playing a Delco-area cop”. At least in the first episode, she hasn’t disappeared into the character of Mare just yet, and it’s distracting.

Still, Ingelsby has set up an intriguing scenario, especially when we see that Erin, somewhat predictably, may have succumbed to the same fate that Katie Bailey did a year prior. There are a ton of layers to this story, with townspeople who are certainly hiding things and/or not doing things in anyone’s best interest but their own. Watching Mare sort through this as she sorts through her personal life is going to bring an extra dimension that we don’t normally get in a show where the put-upon cop tries to solve the unsolvable.

We’re also happy to see a cop that’s not rogue, drinking while driving or somehow so embittered or consumed by work that she has alienated everyone in her life. Sure, things have been rough for Mare — we see at the very end that she’s taking care of her grandson Drew because Drew’s dad, Kevin (Cody Kostro) is no longer around. So on top of everything else she’s going through, we have to explore how Mare has been dealing with what is likely still a very recent loss in her life. If anyone can handle this complexity, it’s Winslet, even if she sounds like she’s ringing up your Tastycakes and Herr’s chips at the local Wawa.

Sex and Skin: The only thing we see is Mare getting busy with Richard Ryan. We’re looking forward to seeing that relationship develop; it’ll either ground Mare or make things even more complicated. Either way, the chemistry between Pearce and Winslet (who have worked together before) is worth watching.

Parting Shot: Mare is in Drew’s bed when she gets a call that makes her sit up in shock. It’s likely the call about Erin’s body being found.

Sleeper Star: Angourie Rice is really good as Mare’s teenage daughter Siobahn. She calls her mom on her crap, is loyal to her father and her friends, and saves Erin from getting an even bigger beatdown under the highway. Not a bad resume for one episode.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Richard mentions that the single novel he’s written was made into a TV movie in the ’90s starring Jill Eikenberry, Mare goes, “I don’t know who that is.” Come on, Mare! Who wasn’t watching LA Law in the late ’80s and early ’90s?

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re likely to get over Winslet as the rough-hewn Mare as soon as the central case in Mare of Easttown kicks into gear. The first episode did such a good job of building a world around Mare that we’re excited to see what’s next.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Mare Of Easttown On HBO Max