The perfect whodunit? How Mare of Easttown mastered an old formula
The finale of the gripping crime drama Mare of Easttown will be broadcast on Monday night, and it promises to be a finish for the ages. The series, with Kate Winslet an Emmy shoo-in as downtrodden Pennsylvania detective Mare Sheehan, will go down as one of the highlights of what’s already been a momentous year for television. Line of Duty has set ratings records, The Underground Railroad has gobsmacked critics and Unforgotten has reminded us that good crime drama is still TV catnip. Mare of Easttown is as brilliant, as addictive, as beautifully shot and as exquisitely performed as all of them put together.
If you want to win the game, however, first you’ve got to know the rules. Take an objective look at what makes Mare of Easttown so good – study, as Mare would, the evidence – and you find that the main reason Mare of Easttown is so special is that it’s so normal: it simply takes standard crime drama tropes and hones them to perfection. In its characters, its structure and conceits Brad Inglesby’s drama is the ne plus ultra of modern TV detective dramas, following in the footsteps of Twin Peaks, Broadchurch, Happy Valley and many others.
Not convinced? Here we lay out the evidence to support the case:
Setting
Small towns, ideally parochial and full of twitching net curtains, are the petri dish for good crime drama. They come with secrets, mysteries, rituals and (sometimes literal) skeletons in closets baked in. No one in the UK has a clue what backwoods Pennsylvania is like, which means that Mare of Easttown is able to feel deeply authentic while meeting the modern broadcaster’s demand for new, distinctive "worlds" that stand out in the slew of samey streaming content. Broadchurch had the Jurassic Coast. Twin Peaks had Twin Peaks. You want intrigue? Take the viewer somewhere they don’t know.
A Messed Up Lead
Mare’s son killed himself, her druggy daughter in law is trying to get custody of her beloved grandson, her husband has left her and she is just so, so dog tired all of the time. If only she knew that this is just par for the course in great detective drama. There has been not one single decent TV sleuth who isn’t "troubled" in some way and with good reason – the tacit understanding from Sherlock Holmes onwards is that it takes one messed-up mind to understand another. The challenge is to get us to care about the person with all these problems. Mare of Easttown weaves the personal – Mare’s family travails, her love life, her psychologist sessions – with the procedural (the murder plot) to brilliant effect, so that you really can’t say whether it’s a character or plot-driven drama. By bringing the murder plot right up to Mare’s doorstep, as the story arc seems to be doing, it ends up perfectly poised as both.
A Chalk and Cheese Pairing
The introduction of Colin "Zabes" Zabel (Evan Peters), the strait-laced FBI investigator, as Mare’s partner in episode two was straight from the murder-mystery playbook. Hardy (David Tennant) had Miller (Olivia Colman) in Broadchurch. Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) had Sheriff Truman (Michael Ontkean) in Twin Peaks. Rust (Matthew McConaughey) had Marty (Woody Harrelson) in True Detective. It’s mandatory not just for the interplay between disparate characters and the comic relief that can provide, but to highlight the difference between the smalltown setting (see above) and the outside world. Plus, it really helps with exposition if you’ve got two people to discuss what’s going on (usually in a car).
A Signature Something
It can be a hat, a mac, a statement vehicle or in Mare’s case a baggy plaid shirt and roots, but audiences love a visual motif. It provides the quirk to set against the quotidian; it gives people something to talk about in Sunday Supplements (“Is Mare-chic the Ultimate Lockdown Look?”) and bat back and forth on Twitter. Plus, an idiosyncratic whatnot is the perfect distraction from the fact that ultimately, even great crime drama follows certain codes.
A Dodgy Priest
Mare has Deacon Mark (James McArdle), a quivering bin bag of a man who, even if he’s not guilty of Erin’s murder has undoubtedly been as guilty as sin of something from the moment we met him. Broadchurch had Vicar Paul Coates (Arthur Darvill); Twin Peaks’s Clarence Brockelhurst (Royce D Applegate). In smalltown TV land there’s no greater red flag than a dog collar. It’s probably because they take confession and are expected to be pure that questionable clergy have become such a key part of any half-decent murder scenario.
The Shocking Premature Kill-Off
Popularised by Game of Thrones but now adopted by all premium dramas, if you want to keep your audience gripped, bump off their favourite character. Not Mare, obviously – you never do that – but Zabel, who straight-batted his way into our affections, fell in love with Mare like we had and then was summarily blatted. Stringer Bell (IDris Elba) got it in The Wire, Darryl Garrs (Robert Emms) in Happy Valley and most recently Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) in Unforgotten met a sudden end. It’s an expression of life’s stark randomness that somehow speaks to modern times. But given the sudden kill-off has become a trope, it has to be handled carefully – Zabel had just begun to be given a backstory and a character when he was nixed. We liked him; we wanted more, and that made it doubly shocking when he met his end.
That’s It, You’re Off the Case
It is imperative that our hero detective hit rock bottom, and in general this is signified by the demand for them to hand in their badge. Mare was thus denuded in episode three after planting drugs on her daughter in law. What’s important is that the cop hands in the badge and then immediately gets back on the case, going against their scowling boss’s express directive. It’s a classic arc from Greek Tragedy and it never fails: hamartia followed by catharsis followed by you’re nicked.
The Drip Feed
In the age of all-episodes-now binge-watching one thing that great crime dramas like Mare of Easttown have realised is the importance of making the audience wait. That translates as a return to good, old-fashioned, one episode a week scheduling. It’s practically imperative for cliffhangers that hang, questions that tantalise and the kind of theorising and excitement that is at the core of any accomplished whodunit. If the show is good enough – and Mare of Easttown is – then the punters will wait. At least until Monday, anyway.
Mare of Easttown concludes on Sky Atlantic at 9pm on Monday. Also available on NOW TV
