With a depressed cop, a troubled war veteran and general blue-collar gloom and doom, we’ve seen this cliche-heavy drama a thousand times – and Mare of Easttown is a hard act to follow
“Folks say that as we get on, life is a series of indignities,” muses a judge to a police chief in a small American town. “I’m not sure I see it that way. Because once you don’t give a shit how you look or what people think, then nothing seems like an indignity.” He Irishes up his coffee with whiskey. “If my man boobs are blocking the view of my shoes, so what?”
It’s a good question, the kind of lugubrious, cod-philosophical rhetoric that bejewels the dramatic wasteland of American Rust (Sky Atlantic). But there is a problem. Between page and shot, the man boobs have gone walkies, and it’s the judge’s beer belly that is obscuring his shoes. Is nobody paying attention to continuity?
