The Kate Winslet-led HBO drama is a stark contrast to David E. Kelley's Big Little Lies and The Undoing. "Nicole Kidman starred in both. But the shows also had more in common that just Kidman," says Alex Abad-Santos. "They were both about the glamorous lives of very beautiful, very rich women beleaguered by sociopaths, awful marriages, and homicide. Their privileged lives complete with plush homes, beautiful coats, and perfect handbags were part of the shows’ appeal; the women’s well-appointed kitchens, gorgeous fashion, and lives full of surreal opulence matched their degree of emotional terror and turmoil. Mare has plenty of terror and turmoil; not so much of the rest...Mare of Easttown wraps itself around its title character’s complexities and struggles, and shows how this case eats away at the thin walls that separate Mare’s personal self from the public and professional selves she presents to the world. Winslet is mesmerizing as she allows us to see the ugliness Mare is capable of and how obsessive, perhaps even abusive, she can be when she’s threatened."
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TOPICS: Mare of Easttown, HBO, Angourie Rice, Kate Winslet, Michelle Zauner