So, you enjoyed Mare of Easttown and want to check out another show just like it? Well, you’ve come to the right place! You might not realize it, but there are several pretty good to great shows out there that can bring you all of the small-town suspense of Mare right now! Hell, some even have Oscar winning leads! To find the right follow-up to Mare of Easttown, all you need to do is determine what you loved about the limited series and match it up with one of the shows outlined below. Then just snag that streaming service and get to watching.
Requirements:
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Female Detective with Screwed-Up Personal Life
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Sexual Tension Between the Two Detective Leads
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Dead Girl at the Heart of the Story
Recommendation: The Killing (Streaming on Hulu)
Adapted from a Danish series Forbrydelsen*, this four season AMC/Netflix series starred Mireille Enos (the female detective with the screwed-up personal life) as Sarah Linden and Joel Kinnaman (the partner with whom Sarah had all of that sexual tension) as Stephen Holder. Much like with Mare, Sarah was the local detective being replaced by an outsider – only she gets sucked back in by the murder of Rosie Larsen right when she’s ready to walk out the door. Now, here’s where things get tricky with the series. The first season was largely lauded by everyone – critics, viewers – until the season finale that doesn’t solve the murder. People were LIVID when the season ended on a cliffhanger and no resolution and it largely torpedoed the series moving forward. The mystery is solved in season two, but so much of the momentum had been lost between the seasons that the show never managed to recover and its final two seasons are not worth a look. But seasons one and two offer a satisfying story and some sensational performances from Enos and Kinnaman, so if you’re looking for a show pretty darn close to the Mare formula, that might just be your pick.
*The original Danish version is streaming on Amazon and has a wholly different killer than the US version, so if you are not subtitle-averse, this might be the one for you. It continues to be a critically acclaimed series, and I highly recommend it.
Requirements:
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Small Town
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Sexual Tension Between the Two Detective Leads
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Dead Kid at the Heart of the Story
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Oscar-Winning Actress Playing a Detective
Recommendation: Broadchurch (The British Version; Streaming on Netflix)
Starring David Tennant and Olivia Colman as DI Alec Hardy (the outsider who comes in and works the big case) and DS Ellie Miller (the local with a connection to the town and its many suspects), the first season is centered around the tragic murder of young Danny Latimer as it brings the small English seaside town to its knees. While the series aired for three seasons (and spawned a needless American adaptation that starred Tennant and Anna Gunn in the Colman role – don’t watch it, it’s not worth it), only the first season is worth a look. Subsequent seasons attempted to build off of the murder mystery (with the second season dealing with the trial of the killer and the third dealing with a rape within the town) and small-town setting, but never achieved the heights of that first season. If you think of the series as a limited one (much like Mare), you’ll likely enjoy it a lot more than those of us who watched the whole arc unfold.
Requirements:
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Small Town
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Murder mystery
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Oscar-Winning Actor Playing a Detective
Recommendation: True Detective (Season One; Streaming on HBO Max)
This is an oldie, but a goodie. I will warn you that there was a bit of controversy over the ending of the season when it originally aired back in 2014, so you might not love how this one wraps up, but the journey to get there? Well, it’s a hell of a ride. Starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, the story follows two former detectives as they are interviewed about a murder case they worked 17 years earlier. We see that case unfold in flashbacks, while we get to listen to the modern day versions of the characters wax poetic on a number of topics outside of the case (McConaughey’s Rust Cohle gets to deliver the show’s most quoted line “Time is a flat circle” during once such conversation). There are two additional seasons of the show – season two is atrocious and avoid it like the plague – but as the series is an anthology, there’s a whole new cast, setting, and story each time around. Season one is far and away the best of the lot and the only one to really hew close to Mare’s sensibilities.
Requirements:
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Very Small Town
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Murder mystery
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Focus on the Personal Stories Over the Professional
Recommendation: Rectify (Streaming on Amazon and AMC+)
This one is a bit of a wild card in the lot, as Rectify isn’t about detectives trying to solve a murder mystery. Instead, it’s the story of a man getting off death row for a murder he may not have committed and trying to fit back into his family, small town, and life after spending half of his life behind bars. This series is truly sensational – and the murder that sent Daniel, the show’s protagonist, to prison does eventually get solved in the show’s final season – but this one is far more concerned with the human cost of this story and less about doing the work to solve a case. If you were less focused on which Ross family member killed Erin in Mare and more focused on the show’s exploration of the stifling power of guilt, loss, and family structures, Rectify is definitely the show you’re looking for.
