'Mr. Mercedes' Featurette: The Stephen King Series Is Now On Peacock

Mr. Mercedes is not a new show. But Peacock is sure treating it like one. The Stephen King-inspired series originally aired its first three seasons on Audience Network, and if you're reading that and thinking, "What the hell is Audience Network?", you're not alone! In fact, the channel doesn't even exist anymore. It was discontinued in May of 2020. Audience's loss is Peacock's gain, as the free streaming service is now making all three seasons available. There's no word on a fourth season yet, but perhaps if enough people watch Mr. Mercedes on Peacock then Peacock will order more episodes. In the meantime, a new Mr. Mercedes featurette below goes behind-the-scenes of the show.

I'm a huge Stephen King nerd. I have been for most of my life. But I'll confess that I just can't get into his Bill Hodges trilogy. It's probably because I'm just not much of a mystery buff, and the Bill Hodges tales are primarily mysteries, although they do throw a few supernatural elements in here and there. As a result, I've never bothered to watch Mr. Mercedes. And I'm not sure I could've if I even wanted to, since the show aired on Audience, a network I have no idea if I have access to.

But now the show has moved to Peacock. To be clear: there are no new episodes on Peacock – just the first two seasons that already aired, with the already-aired season 3 arriving at some point in the future. But if I had to guess, I'd say that Peacock is trying to decide how big an audience there is for the show now. If it does good streaming numbers they might go ahead and order more. If not, at least the show is now available to a wider audience.

The featurette above isn't very in-depth. It's mostly Mr. King talking about how exciting it is to see someone adapt his words into reality. It also features a moment where Stephen King says "I hope people will binge Mr. Mercedes on Peacock!", and just hearing the master of horror fiction utter that sentence is very funny to me, so at least there's that.

Mr. Mercedes "follows a retired detective who is tormented by a serial killer (Brady Hartsfield, aka Mr. Mercedes) through a series of letters and e-mails, causing him to set out on a dangerous and potentially felonious crusade to protect his loved ones and himself." The cast includes Brendan Gleeson, Harry Treadaway, Kelly Lynch, Jharrel Jerome, Mary-Louise Parker, Holland Taylor, Justine Lupe, Breeda Wool, Scott Lawrence, Ann Cusack, Jack Huston, Tessa Ferrer, Maximiliano Hernández, and Nancy Travis. The show is now streaming on Peacock.