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IF STEPHEN KING is involved, you can be pretty sure a TV show or movie is going to be psychologically ~interesting~.

And so it is with Mr Mercedes that started in the States this week. It stars Brendan Gleeson (in his first major American TV series) as retired detective Bill Hodges, an ex-cop who never got over one particularly gruesome unsolved case involving multiple murder by speeding Mercedes-Benz.

Who casually drives around with a clown mask on

GREAT

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The show is based on the 2014 novel by King, and the 10 episode series just began on the Audience Network.

Collider says, in its review of the first episode, that there aren’t as many ghosts as some other King works but it’s dark enough nonetheless:

Entirely devoid of ghosts, ghouls, and monsters, the hard boiled novel is structured as a lean cat-and-mouse chase between a mass murderer and the retired detective who failed to catch him.

Harry Treadway shares the lead billing with Gleeson, and the pair are well matched:

Treadaway elevates Barry beyond the standard serial killer and he’s matched by Gleeson, who delivers one of the most King-ian heroes we’ve seen on screen. Fuelled by rock ‘n roll, whiskey, working class malaise and an abundant seed of guilt, Hodges is brash and irresponsible but more or less a good guy with a bullish conviction to see justice (or maybe vengeance) served. The duo makes a fine leading pair, though they share little to no scenes together, acting as two opposite charged poles that keep Mr. Mercedes in constant magnetic tumult.

High praise.

And it turns out that Stephen King – who’s executive producer on the show – had Brendan in mind to play Hodges all along

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In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, fellow EP David E Kelley was asked how he got a big name like Gleeson on board:

Fortunately, there was not a lot of arm-twisting. When I had read the book, I immediately thought of Brendan Gleeson as the perfect actor to personify the part of Hodges. And coincidentally, Stephen King also envisioned Brendan being the prototype for Hodges. We had never shared that with each other, but I think that’s the guy we pictured.

The first episode is said to be a little slow, but with 10 epsiodes in total they have plenty of time to pick up the pace, as per TVWeb’s review:

Mr. Mercedes does a fantastic job of giving a brutal enough crime that automatically makes us want to not only see who the villain is but root for our blue collar former Detective Hodges in catching him

No word on it reaching Ireland yet, but with names like Stephen King and Brendan Gleeson all over it it’ll surely be available in full somewhere in the future.

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