Mare of Easttown Review

The setting is doing far more work than the crime. This is a specific, unglamorous corner of Delaware County, with vape shops, a church hall, front steps and a vowel sound the cast worked hard for, and the density of the community is the plot's engine: every suspect is somebody's cousin, every secret has three people who half know it. Kate Winslet strips out all vanity, playing a woman who eats badly, drinks too much and is nastiest to the people trying to help her, and the story of her son is revealed so gradually that its weight arrives late and completely.

Jean Smart and Julianne Nicholson are both extraordinary, and Nicholson's final scene is the best acting in it. The mystery itself is competent rather than brilliant; the misdirection relies on withholding a fact the detective already knows, and the penultimate episode's shock is more effective than it is fair. But as a portrait of a place and a grief, it is close to flawless.