SummaryPsychopath killer Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway) sends letters and emails to retired police detective Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson) about his unsolved killings in David E. Kelley's adaptation of Stephen King’s 2014 book.
SummaryPsychopath killer Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway) sends letters and emails to retired police detective Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson) about his unsolved killings in David E. Kelley's adaptation of Stephen King’s 2014 book.
Mr. Mercedes‘ pacing likely won’t do the series any favors with the weekly crowd, but stick with it and you’ll find a fascinating spin on genre conventions packed to the brim with smart character drama and uniformly excellent performances.
Gleeson does a first-rate job with a character we’ve seen before, the tormented cop who plunges into a battle where he’s seemingly outflanked and outgunned. Treadaway is suitably troubling as a kid who represses such waves of rage and frustration that we don’t doubt it could explode somewhere. That the causes of his rage play as clichés doesn’t make him less menacing, though it makes the larger story less than subtle. Call it a solid campfire yarn.
In fairness, it’s faithful to the source material, but it’s a big leap and the landing is a bit shaky because it feels so caddy-corner to the gritty crime drama of the first season. ... But it is still creepy.
Mr. Mercedes comes off as a plodding compendium of serial-killer and cop cliches, all conveyed via an unrelentingly dour tone and almost suffocating aesthetic of drab greens, blacks and browns.