HBO's 7-Episode Crime Drama Masterpiece Deserves Even Higher Than Its 95% Rotten Tomatoes Score

2 weeks ago 18

Published Aug 24, 2026, 5:30 PM EDT

Liz Hersey is an Editor and Critic for ScreenRant's TV team, editing, reviewing, writing, and creating content about the iconic shows you love to watch. She began her editing career at ScreenRant in 2019, shortly after joining the site as a Writer that same year.

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HBO is home to some of the best crime drama series of all time, but one particular entry in the genre remains underrated, with not even a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score doing it justice. While long-running shows like The Sopranos or The Wire are what most people think of as HBO's best crime dramas, there are some incredible miniseries as well.

With no room for bloat, crime drama miniseries can be some of the most intense, heart-pounding shows on television, a description that certainly applies to Mare of Easttown. Premiering in 2021, Mare of Easttown stars Kate Winslet as Marianne "Mare" Sheehan, a Pennsylvania detective investigating the murder of a local teenage girl with unwanted help from a young county detective. Though this sounds like the premise of 100 other shows, Mare of Easttown is also a gripping family drama and a heartbreaking portrayal of a town torn apart by the opioid epidemic.

Mare of Easttown left a lasting impression on its audience, including awards voting bodies. Not only did it win Winslet an Emmy, but her co-stars Evan Peters and Julianne Nicholson also took home hardware for their performances. At 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, critics loved Mare of Easttown too — even if it really should have been a show that scored a perfect 100%.

Mare Of Easttown Has 95% On Rotten Tomatoes, But Deserves 99-100%

Kate Winslet and Evan Peters in Mare of Easttown.

At first blush, Mare of Easttown sounds like it could be a forgettable crime show stuffed with tired clichés, and it's easy to understand why some audiences wouldn't want to watch something that sounds like another "dead girl" drama. However, the murder of Erin McMenamin (Cailee Spaeny) is anything but exploitative. Mare of Easttown doesn't fetishize her death, nor does it put her on a pedestal; she's a struggling teenage single mom with everyday, relatable, unglamorous problems.

What Spaeny does in her limited Mare of Easttown screen time is incredible, and just a taste of the fantastic work she'd deliver in everything from Priscilla to Beef season 2. Every actor in the Mare of Easttown cast is at the top of their game, going beyond even subverting tropes to create some of the most authentic ever put to the small screen in any genre, let alone one as easily sensationalized as the crime drama.

As the protagonist, Winslet's Mare is your typical grizzled, hard-drinking veteran detective haunted by the one case she wasn't able to solve, but she's also so much more than that. Mare has vast amounts of empathy, and she's more concerned about the well-being of Easttown's citizens than she is about meeting an arrest quota. Similarly, Peters' hotshot young detective, Colin Zabel, surprises everyone, including Mare, and no better spin has been put on a "loyal best friend" character than Nicholson's Lori Ross.

Mare of Easttown Primetime Emmy Awards Wins

Category	Actor	Character
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie	Kate Winslet	Marianne "Mare" Sheehan
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie	Evan Peters	Colin Zabel
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie	Julianne Nicholson	Lori Ross

The actors give living color and waking life to creator Brad Ingelsby's incredible show, which pays as much attention to the characters' generational trauma, grief, and suffering community as it does the central whodunit. Mare of Easttown has more empathy than even HBO's most legendary crime dramas, and its Rotten Tomatoes score should have reflected that.

5 Years After Its Finale, Mare Of Easttown's TV Future Still Isn't Over

Lori (Julianne Nicholson) looking concerned in Mare of Easttown.

When a miniseries blows up in the pop culture consciousness, it asks the inevitable question, "Will there be a season 2?", as popular shows like Big Little Lies and The White Lotus have extended far past their initial one-season conceits. While nothing has been confirmed, in January 2026, Winslet hinted that Mare of Easttown was a very real possibility, saying, "There’s a strong likelihood it would film sometime in 2027." (via Deadline)

Winslet's tease is exciting yet vague, but what's crystal clear is that the world of Mare of Easttown is indeed expanding. Premiering in 2025, Ingelsby's Task, another acclaimed HBO crime drama, has been revealed to officially share the same universe as Mare, and that Nicholson's Lori Ross will appear in Task season 2.

This is thrilling news to fans of the Winslet series, and proves how relevant the show is over five years after Mare of Easttown aired its finale. In terms of crime drama protagonists, Mare Sheehan may not yet have reached Tony Soprano's icon status, but there's no denying that she's left an indelible mark on TV history.