Mare Of Easttown (2021)

Dr. Corinne Masur 

**** 4 stars out of 5

1 Kleenex Rating

IMDB Rating: 8.5

Suggested Age Range: For Adults Only

As much as it is about anything, Mare of Easttown is about parenting.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you should know ahead of time that it is not a show for children or young teens.  It is not even a show for many adults, containing as it does, many of the most egregious evils of this world. But it IS worth watching both for all its twists and turns and for it’s meditations on parenthood.

Mare of Easttown is a well conceived drama and who-done-it. And while it is fun to debate whether the Philly accent is sufficiently authentic or whether Kate Winslet had to gain weight to play the role of Mare, it is also interesting to look at it as a primer on the full spectrum of parenting with all its complexities and opportunities for love, conflict, misunderstanding and loss. It deals with the imperfections of parents and children alike, with the many mistakes both can make finely portrayed. In this show there are secrets and betrayals and fierce love and loyalty.  It faces, head on, the fact that parenthood is messy and complicated, often painful and sometimes tragic.  In this show, as in life, both mothers and fathers make the worst of errors, use the poorest of judgement, and commit the most heinous of acts while still loving and wanting to protect their children.