Stephen King Knows Exactly What Went Wrong With The Mr. Mercedes TV Series
Remember the "Mr. Mercedes" TV series? Few might.
"Mr. Mercedes" ran for 30 episodes over the course of three seasons from 2017 to 2019. It was a detective series starring Brendan Gleeson, Harry Treadaway, Justine Lupe, Kelly Lynch, and Mary-Louise Parker, and it was based on a trilogy of hard-boiled novels — "Mr. Mercedes," "Finders Keepers," and "End of Watch" — written by Stephen King in 2014 and 2015. The books began with the story of a retired homicide detective named Kermit "Bill" Hodges (Gleeson) who became involved in a serial killer case he was never able to close while still active. They got weirder from there.
The show was developed by TV superstar David E. Kelley, and was pretty well received by viewers and critics. The first season sports an 84% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on a scant 29 reviews. The second season got a full-on 100% approval rating, but only four reviews were published. There isn't a score recorded for the show's third season. It seems that "Mr. Mercedes" wasn't widely seen. Weirdly, the Justine Lupe character, named Holly Gibney, carried over into the 2020 HBO miniseries "The Outsider" where she was played by Cynthia Erivo.
Why did everyone stay away from "Mr. Mercedes?" Because it was broadcast on a little-known cable TV network that never got a lot of attention. Perhaps only AT&T and DirecTV users remember the short-lived Audience Network, a service that only existed from 2016 to 2020. Back in 2020, King spoke with the New York Times, and he expressed some regret over the fact that "Mr. Mercedes" never reached a mass audience. It wasn't that it was a bad show by any means. It was just hiding too deeply in the weeds of the Streaming Wars.
Mr. Mercedes was ignored because it was on the obscure Audience Network
King had a terrific simile for the way "Mr. Mercedes" was handled. He said:
"It was like we brought a stadium show to a coffee shop. [...] I liked it a lot, but nobody saw it."
It will likely take years and years to sift through the glut of prestige TV content that was made in the late '10s and early '20s. How many Quibi shows are still out there, waiting to be discovered, for instance? How many Facebook Watch shows did you watch? Or YouTube Red? It seems that the original shows for Audience will have to be distributed among some of the better-known power-players (or merely the Streaming Wars survivors) before they can be discovered. It didn't matter if certain shows had existing I.P. or boasted an impressive cast of highly paid movie stars, a lot of them simply slipped by the wayside, just because the seas of content were so vast.
Luckily, all three seasons of "Mr. Mercedes" were able to creep its way onto Peacock, where subscribers can watch it for free. It's also available for rent via Apple TV. King, naturally, was relieved, saying "Thank God for that. People are actually seeing it now."
Of course, there is no shortage of King-based TV. "Mr. Mercedes" had multiple King-based TV siblings — all released at about the same time — that also were met with mere audience warmth. The King multiverse series "Castle Rock" ran for two seasons in 2018 and 2019, and a miniseries remake of "The Stand" was featured on CBS All Access (later Paramount+) in 2020. King also personally wrote the 2021 TV adaptation of his "Lisey's Story," which aired on Apple TV+. There's a lot to catch up on. "Mr. Mercedes" is merely hiding out, waiting for its post-Audience audience to come along.