SERIES PREMIERE: Last year’s first season of
Mr. Mercedes would seem to have completed the story it set out to tell. Based on the Stephen King novel, it was a very gripping miniseries about a retired detective named Bill Hodges, played by Brendan Gleeson, haunted by a crime he had been unable to solve – the case of a deranged man who used a stolen Mercedes to plow into a crowd of people lined up to apply at a job recruitment fair. That man, Brady Hartsfield, played by Harry Treadaway, resurfaced to taunt Hodges, and the two played an escalating, dangerous game – which ended, at the conclusion of Season 1, with Hodges surviving a heart attack he suffered while helping to thwart Brady’s latest mass murder scheme, and Brady beaten senselessly into a long-term coma. So where in the world can
Mr. Mercedes go from here? With David E. Kelley writing some of the scripts, delving deeply into King’s world, to some amazing, truly spooky places. Let’s just say that Brady, while in his most immobile state, nonetheless makes for the most threatening and frightening coma victim since Leo Johnson in the original
Twin Peaks – and what happens by the end of the second episode of this new season of
Mr. Mercedes turns this series into an entirely new level, and category, of drama. In a word: Wow.
For a full review, see Ed Bark's Uncle Barky's Bytes.