Mare of easttown, season finale review: a twist, a moment of heartbreak - an absolute masterpiece

Anita Singh Arts and Entertainment Editor 01 June 2021 8:34am BST *** THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS *** I will admit to a fleeting  moment of doubt during the finale of MARE OF EASTTOWN (Sky

Atlantic). It’s the pessimist in me. The killer was - seemingly - unmasked five minutes into the episode. He delivered a full confession not long after that. Would this be the show’s Line

of Duty moment: an early reveal followed by the drama trudging to an underwhelming end? Thankfully not. I should have kept faith in Brad Ingelsby, the writer who has taken this most familiar

of TV genres - the downbeat detective drama - and crafted a masterpiece. There was a twist, which we’ll come to. But the whodunit has always been only one element of Mare of Easttown. What

unfolded was a compendium of all that made the show great. First, there was the plotting. Mare’s visit to the home of an elderly couple in episode one, following up a report of a peeping

Tom, appeared to be an establishing device: an introduction to Easttown, and an illustration of the fact that Mare’s job was usually humdrum and more akin to being a social worker than a

detective. The man of the house, Mr Carroll, popped up in a later episode at his wife’s wake to confess to an affair with Mare’s mother. That scene was there just for comic effect, right?

Wrong. Because Mr Carroll, and the security camera he bought from Best Buy but didn’t know how to use, turned out to be crucial to solving the murder.  And then there was the heartbreak of

finding out who really killed Erin, a revelation which pulled at all the threads of community and friendship and the special bond between mothers and sons. John Ross (Joe Tippett), confessed

to the murder, after first trying to persuade his brother, Billy (Robbie Tann) to take the rap. But the awful truth was that John was covering for his 13-year-old son, Ryan (Cameron Mann),

who shot Erin accidentally. Julianne Nicholson put in a strong performance as Ryan’s devastated mother, Lori, but she - like everyone here - was acted off the screen by Kate Winslet. You

knew, moments before she did it, that Mare was going to head up into the attic at the end to confront her grief over the death of her son. But that wasn’t because the drama was predictable;

it was because by this point, thanks to the skill of the writing and the acting, we knew Mare so well. Is it too much to hope that there will be another series?