But how about Kate Winslet, who has frequently dropped her proper British accent to play, for example, a German woman during wartime (The Reader), an Australian returning home to her small town (The Dressmaker), and a Polish-American business woman (Steve Jobs). If you think about an actress who has convincingly portrayed characters with distinctive accents, you probably think of Meryl Streep (Sophie's Choice, The Iron Lady, etc.). Something you don't easily see in TV series due to budget restrictions. Also you can see the entire families for many of the characters involved, giving the feeling that everyone is an actual living person with their own lives. Everything feels quite realistic as the protagonist (a police detective that tries to solve a cold case and a new crime at the same time) talk to people with intriguing background motivations secrets. I love the pacing, the non-nonsense drama, the characters involved. The episodes require your attention to put two and two together and make sence of them for your self. And the grandchild reveals his dad's name as he is naming a turtle. And she is not the protagonists daughter. The protagonist is a grandma? But her daughter is too young for that. Character introduction is not easy and here are revealed bit by bit, creating mystery. Two episodes in and I can easily say that this series treats its audience with respect as it trusts that they pay attention. Mare could do more adventures but it would be hard for it to be as personal as this one. It would be hard to gather the cast again and the story wraps up almost perfectly. It's probably going to be a limited series. SNL did a fun sendup which almost killed me. It's the personal connections and specific characterizations. Other standout performances include Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, and Evan Peters. It's a big time star doing a specific accent and a cast of great actors contributing great characters. It's the Broadchurch subgenre except in this one, the whodunnit element is almost subservient to the emotional intra-family relationships. This is the era of the tragic small town murder mystery. Another girl ends up dead and Mare is given the case. Police Detective Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) has been under pressure to solve the case of a friend's missing daughter for the past year. It's a place where tragedy and drugs have been weighting on its people. And Winslet shows why she is one of the best of her generation.Įasttown is a close-knit community outside of Philadelphia. Watching the whole thing is a big investment of time but I am glad I did, overall very interesting. The discs have a number of interesting "making of" extras and it is revealed that Winslet often modified the written dialog, adding or substituting things that would make Mare more realistic. Plus the dialog is uniformly well written. It is clearly fiction but what makes it so good and so interesting are the characters that really could be real people in any small community. And there are a number of Red herrings to keep the viewers guessing. They eventually are, they involve people of the community, and there are some big surprises along the way. Much of the roughly 7 hours of running time is in some way associated with trying to solve those crimes. There are two significant crimes causing community friction, one is the disappearance of two young ladies, the other is a murder of a third young lady. A community where people often don't even knock or ring the doorbell when going to visit someone, they just walk it. A community where most everyone knows everyone else and many are related to each other. It is set in the somewhat fictional town of Easttown, but in fact much of it does take place in the real Easttown Township, Pa. I believe my wife would have enjoyed the series if she had stuck with it. My wife started with me but abandoned it after just half of the first episode, she didn't like the brusque nature of Mare, but that is part of her character arc, influenced by losses she had recently suffered. We don't have an HBO subscription so I was able to view this limited series (7 episodes, each roughly one hour) on a set of DVDs from my public library.
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