Mr. Mercedes was originally launched on AT&T’s Audience Network in 2017 where it ran for three full seasons. The Audience Network shut down earlier this year, however, and now the show has found a new home on streamer Peacock, which is releasing Seasons 1 and 2 (the fate of Season 3 is still unknown). It’s easy to understand why Peacock would want to acquire the series. Not only does it boast an A-list cast with starry names including Brendan Gleeson, Holland Taylor and Mary Louise Parker, the show is an adaptation of a trilogy of novels by Stephen King (the first of which provides the title for the show) and was created by uber-producer David E. Kelley, who was ushering the Emmy-winning HBO series Big Little Lies to the screen at around the same time he was working on Mr. Mercedes.
Given those impressive elements I wish I came away from the first season (which was the only one made available by Peacock for review) feeling more excited about the show. Yet while Mr. Mercedes boasts all the elements of a prestige thriller (unlike many of King’s stories, there is no supernatural component, at least in the first season), the whole feels like less than the sum of its parts. And although the performances and some sharp writing make it more absorbing than it might be otherwise, at ten episodes the season feels too long, leading to pacing issues and some tedious repetition.
Some of the repetition feels organic to the story. The series centers on Gleeson’s Bill Hodges, a newly retired detective, who’s having trouble adjusting to his days being free. The show emphasizes this with an opening credits sequence that showcases Bill’s depressing morning routine. As the season goes on and the story progresses, his activities in this sequence change to emphasize Hodges’ evolving perspective. This is a clever device, but though the rest of the show is meticulously crafted, it isn’t always quite as effective.
Like many a TV detective before him, Hodges has ONE BIG CASE he never solved and can’t quite let go of. For him, it’s the man who stole a Mercedes and then deliberately plowed into a group of people waiting for a job fair to start, killing 16 and injuring dozens more. However, while the killer remains a mystery to Hodges, that's not the case for the audience. Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway), a tech whiz who works a dead-end job at a Best-Buy-type store and also happens to be a deranged murderer, is introduced in the first episode.
From there the series unfolds on two tracks. One following Hodge’s life and one following Brady’s, including the times when they intersect as Brady goes out of his way to taunt Hodges through email and various other means, driving Hodges to continue his investigation. Dramatizing the cop’s and the killer’s intertwined stories sometimes works, enabling the show to fill in the mechanics of Brady’s life almost as much as it does Hodge’s while upping the suspense by showing some of the horrible things Brady does or plans to do as they happen. Ultimately, however, the show withholds many of Brady’s plans, so while there are frequent scenes of him tinkering in his basement lair, all the audience knows is he’s planning something bad, leading them to feel just as horrified as Hodges when his plans finally come to fruition. Switching between depicting and obscuring Brady's intentions can feel like a frustrating bait and switch, like the show is trying to have things both ways.
At the same time, Brady’s motivations are never clear. In the few scenes where Brady either converses with Hodges or speaks for himself, everything he says is too obtuse to have any real meaning. He’s clearly deeply disturbed, and Hodges seems to believe he’s just a well of darkness. Maybe that’s supposed to be enough of an explanation. But very few people with mental health issues are violent, much less mass murderers, so to me at least, this felt unsatisfying.
The biggest bright spots of the show are the young people who help Hodges in his investigation. From the opening episode, Jerome Robinson (Jharrel Jerome, who went on to win an Emmy for When They See Us), a smart, charismatic 17-year-old, functions as Hodges' tech expert. Then, in the sixth episode, Holly Gibney (Justine Lupe) is introduced, who not only helps Hodges with the case but makes every scene she’s in more interesting. The character’s name will be familiar to those who know King’s work, where she's shown up multiple times, or watched HBO’s recent limited series The Outsider. In Mr. Mercedes, she’s at her most formative. And while Lupe’s Holly is a different character than Cynthia Erivo’s version in The Outsider, they’re both equally strange and equally easy to love.
Still, Mr. Mercedes never feels as compelling as a thriller should, especially given how much it has going for it. Although it’s punctuated by bursts of gory violence, it often feels overly restrained and controlled. At times it overemphasizes certain things, like the regular verbal abuse of Brady’s boss, and then in others it provides the bare minimum of information. On balance, this makes the series feel too lengthy while tamping down the suspense, making this thriller less than thrilling.
Based on a trilogy of crime novels written by Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes stars Brendan Gleeson, Harry Treadaway, Jharrel Jerome, Mary-Louise Parker and Holland Taylor. The first two seasons arrive on Peacock Thursday, Oct. 15.