Reworking a classic, one tear at a time

It may be missing the melodrama of the original, but a remake of 1940s Oscar-winning classic ‘Mildred Pierce’ shows television packs as big a punch as a movie

IT SAYS a lot for the star wattage of Mildred Pierce– which began on Saturday night – that in the first episode of the mini-series, in a nearly throwaway scene, there are two Oscar winners. Kate Winslet as the title character, looking drab and washed-out sitting in her kitchen getting advice from her sassy, more worldly neighbour, played by Melissa Leo, an Oscar-winner this year for The Fighter. More proof that actors at the top of their game no longer consider TV to be the poor relation of the big screen.

But then this new five-part series – called a film in the titles – is made by HBO, the US cable channel which, when it created The Sopranos, made TV a credible career move, and the director is super-hip auteur Todd Haynes ( Far from Heaven).

The new series, which first aired in the US in March, is a remake of the great three-hanky weepie, Mildred Pierce, the classic 1940s movie starring Joan Crawford in full Mommy Dearestflow, piling on the melodrama and bagging a best actress Oscar in the process.

Based on the James M Cain novel, it’s set in 1931 California as the depression is taking hold. It’s a simple yarn, with more holes in it than a doily. Mildred has kicked out her philandering lay-about husband (Brian F O’Byrne) after his property business fails, and she is left with two young daughters to support. Fearing that her middle-class lifestyle will ebb away, she sets to work making pies in her kitchen and selling them. Then she secretly takes a job as a waitress, opens her own restaurant and soon builds a lucrative business. The daughter, Veda – a scorching performance by child actor Morgan Turner – is a monster fuelled by snobbery and hate and trapped in an emotionally manipulative relationship with her mother. Her first bratty words in the episode are in French and she dismisses her father’s mistress as “so middle-class” – the highest insult her 11-year mind, already bent on a career of social climbing, can think of.

Winslet’s Mildred is very different from Crawford’s. She’s drab and frumpish where Crawford with her sharp suits and flashing kohl-rimmed eyes was the epitome of noirish glamour, and it’s a quieter, more considered performance.

Haynes, who co-wrote the script, shot it in daylight and the interior scenes have a hazy, retro feel capturing the washed-out early years of the Depression. And there’s simply more time – it’s four times longer than the original movie – for Winslet to put flesh on the bare bones of the character and for the script to move away from the camp melodrama of the movie and explore the issues of class that underlie the novel. In the TV version, Mildred is as ashamed of her waitressing job as her daughter; in the movie it’s a more pragmatic stepping stone in her empire-building.

The first episode was slow, maybe too slow. At times, Winslet's many thoughtful looks and silences were too reminiscent of her role as the Nazi guard in The Reader– though there were flashes of the steel her character will need to carry the subsequent episodes. "I just can't take things lying down," she tells her friend, "I have my own ideas" – a radical way of thinking for a suburban housewife at the time.

It did deliver the viperish daughter, whose firmly established character holds out the promise of much more to come, when Evan Rachel Wood takes over as adult Veda. It was enough to make me keep going with my review copy and watch episode two, where the drama really takes off – in as much a languid piece of filming can be said to take off. There’s a truly sad scene that demands the Kleenex – you’d be hard-pressed to squeeze out a tear in episode one, which may have disappointed fans of the movie.

Best of all, slimy playboy Monty (Guy Pearce) appears. He arrives all snake hips and pencil moustache to woo Mildred and set the foundations for her downfall. He looks like he stepped out from under the Klieg lights in a 1930s Hollywood film set – and that’s another reason to tune in to this classy TV drama – to see the pinpoint-accurate 1930s detailing, from the cars to the clothes.

Mildred Pierce

, Sky Atlantic, Saturday