Watchable the week of April 12, 2021

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Mare of Easttown (April 18, 10 p.m., HBO/Crave)

Give me a detective, particularly a female one, who feels like a real human being and I’m a happy viewer.

“Mare of Easttown” does that with a lead performance from Kate Winslet that reminds us of why she’s an Oscar, Emmy and multiple BAFTA-winning actor.

In Winslet’s hands, detective Mare Sheehan is believable right down to the Delaware County accent, which the British Winslet told TV critics in February was one of the hardest she’s ever had to learn. 

Mare has been beaten down by life, but she’s a survivor, devoted to both her family and her job. That job becomes more challenging after a teenage single mother turns up dead in the woods — just a year after another girl from Easttown went missing, an unsolved case that already had Mare under considerable pressure.

Stubborn, prickly and pragmatic, Mare tries to do the right thing but also does some  boneheadedly wrong ones, though Winslet makes you understand the why of them.

She’s backed by an estimable supporting cast, including Jean Smart as her mother Helen; Julianne Nicholson (“The Outsider”) as her best friend Lori; Evan Peters (“American Horror Story”) as her police partner Colin; and Guy Pearce (Winslet’s “Mildred Pierce” cast mate) as her love interest Richard (although I note that Mare’s interactions with Richard struck the one false note in the show for me).

The show’s many characters make Easttown feel like a real community rather than just a place where bad things happen, which is also down to creator and writer Brad Ingelsby, who grew up in the Pennsylvania county next door. (Craig Zobel, known for “The Hunt” and “The Leftovers,” directed.)

But that wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans if the series didn’t work as a captivating crime drama, which it does. It has the usual tropes — the detective with personal demons, the interloper from another police force who becomes a trusted colleague, the reluctant witnesses, the red herrings — but that didn’t impair my enjoyment of the show and my eagerness for the next episodes (I’ve seen five of the seven), each of which ends with a twist that propels the plot forward.

If I had to compare “Mare of Easttown” to another series, I’d pick “Happy Valley” because of that show’s similarly flawed but dedicated female cop protagonist, but “Mare” is its own thing and a notable addition to the genre, one that’s worthy of your attention.

Kim’s Convenience series finale (April 13, 8 p.m., CBC/CBC Gem)

Let’s be honest: Canada punches way below its weight when it comes to producing television. It’s not about lack of talent: it’s a combination, in my view, of the geographic inconvenience of being next door to the United States; lack of funding; and risk adverse TV executives, who’d rather spend money on U.S. imports than develop homegrown content that might fail. And when you look at the Numeris broadcast ratings week after week, you can understand their reticence.

Judging by those, Canadians would rather watch American sitcoms and by-the-numbers medical and police procedurals than anything made here in Canada, with the exception of news and hockey. In the last week of March, for instance, the only homemade TV that cracked the top 30 outside of those two commodities were “MasterChef Canada” and “Big Brother Canada.”

We Canadians also tend not to value anything made here unless someone else tells us it’s good, the most spectacular example of which is “Schitt’s Creek.” This week, we lose another well-made Canadian sitcom that gained fans outside the country thanks to the gargantuan reach of Netflix: “Kim’s Convenience.”

In case you haven’t heard, “Kim’s” is ending a season earlier than expected (stars Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Andrew Phung talk about why in this Canadian Press article), so this season finale has become a series finale.

This episode won’t give fans the closure that “Schitt’s” fans got when that show ended on its own terms, but it’s a reasonable facsimile of a series ender.

The characters are looking ahead — Uma and Appa (Jean Yoon and Lee) to retirement, Jung (Simu Liu) and Janet (Andrea Bang) to their professional futures — while Kimchee (Phung) and Shannon (Nicole Power) resolve some personal issues.

When everyone gathers for dinner, Appa looks back to how he and Uma came to Canada from Korea and made a life for themselves, the most important part of which is family. That seems a fitting epitaph for a show that imbued its comedy with lots of heart.

My wish is that Canadians sit down and watch Tuesday, or at least catch up later in the week, and that the next “Kim’s Convenience” or “Schitt’s Creek” or “Cardinal” or “Trickster,” or any other quality Canadian show we’ve lost, is just around the corner.

Made for Love (April 16, Amazon)

This HBO Max series is described as a dark comedy, but I’d say it’s more of a horror story.

It begins with Hazel (Cristin Milioti, “Palm Springs”) fleeing from her husband Byron (Billy Magnussen, “Tell Me a Story”). The tech billionaire — whose company is called, ahem, Gogol — has insulated himself, and her, from reality in a high tech hub where every material wish is granted but genuine human interaction is non-existent.

After a decade of having her every move monitored and controlled, the last straw for Hazel is the chip that Byron has had implanted in her head, a prototype of his latest invention, a means of connecting the brains of couples and thus eliminating independent thought.

If you’re thinking this is the sort of thing only a man could dream up, yes exactly. Byron describes his invention, called Made for Love, as a way to banish miscommunication, but it’s really patriarchal subjugation in technological form.

Though Hazel has escaped physically, Byron can monitor everything she sees, says and hears, and wages a campaign to wear her down and get her back to the hub, while Hazel is equally determined to get a divorce, lose the chip and gain her freedom.

Most of the series rests on Milioti’s shoulders and she acquits herself well. The other standout is Ray Romano, playing her widowed father Herbert. When Hazel returns to her rundown hometown she finds that he’s taken up with a sex doll, whom he treats as a living, breathing partner. One could argue that Herbert’s love for his inanimate companion is more authentic than what Byron claims to offer Hazel, which is surely what we’re meant to think.

Based on the book by Alissa Nutting and adapted for TV by her and Patrick Somerville (“Maniac”) it’s an odd and sometimes absurd series. What kept me watching was a desire to see Hazel break free of Byron’s smothering imitation of a marriage once and for all.

I won’t spoil things by telling you how it ends, but love plays a role, though perhaps not in the way you’d expect. 

Amazon also debuts “Frank of Ireland” this week, on April 16. It boasts a decent Irish cast, including brothers Brian and Domhnall Gleeson, and Sarah Greene (“Dublin Murders,” “Normal People”), but personally I’m over comedies about irresponsible men-children. One episode of this was all I could handle.

Short Takes

My Love: Six Stories of True Love (April 13, Netflix)

If you’re put off by the dysfunctional partnership in “Made for Love,” this docuseries could be your antidote. It profiles six senior couples in six countries. I watched the first episode, about David and Ginger Isham of Williston, Vermont. They met at a barn dance, married soon after Ginger graduated from high school and raised six kids while running the farm that had been in David’s family since 1871 and which they’ve passed down to their oldest son. Now in their 80s, we watch them over a full year, essentially just living, everything from preplanning their funerals and celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary to doing chores and napping over their afternoon newspapers. There’s beauty in the mundanity and poignancy in the ordinary, a portrait of love that’s both real and aspirational.

Netflix has a few other offerings this week, including Season 2 of social media reality competition “The Circle” (April 14); the Jamie Foxx sitcom “Dad Stop Embarrassing Me!” (April 14) and the animated film “Arlo the Alligator Boy” (April 16).

Odds and Ends

The Treehouse channel is getting a dose of LGBTQ Pride this week with two episodes of its Canadian children’s show “Miss Persona.” In the episode “Love Every Moment” (April 17, 11:45 a.m.) Miss Persona’s mom (Jane McClelland) marries her partner Lorna (Elvira Kurt). In “I Wanna Wear” (April 18, 11:45 a.m.), Miss Persona (Kimberly Persona) takes Brandon Bear to his first Pride parade, complete with drag kings and queens, including Toronto’s Baby Bel Bel.

On PBS, the documentary feature “Picture a Scientist,” about gender and racial biases in science, airs on “Nova” (April 14, 9 p.m.).

I didn’t get a chance to screen the John Stamos-led sports drama “Big Shot,” about a men’s NCAA basketball coach forced to coach a girls’ high school team, but it debuts April 16 on Disney Plus. The same day, the screener releases “Earth Moods,” a travelogue series with music that “gives the audience an opportunity to relax and reset,” according to the press materials.

BritBox has an odd couple comedy about a bigoted white woman who’s forced to re-examine her prejudices after meeting an African asylum seeker in “Kate & Koji” (April 13). Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn is cafe owner Kate and Jimmy Akingbola (“Arrow”) is displaced doctor Koji.

For more Brit TV, Acorn TV has Season 3 of “Keeping Faith” (April 17), starring Eve Myles (“Broadchurch,” “Torchwood”), and CBC Gem has “The Secrets She Keeps” (April 14), starring Laura Carmichael (Lady Edith in “Downton Abbey”) as a troubled pregnant woman with a dangerous secret.

NOTE: The dates and times listed here reflect information provided to me and cross-checked where possible against broadcast and streaming schedules, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of series reviewed reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste.