Mr Mercedes is an Audience Network television show adaptation of the Bill Hodges trilogy: Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch. It began in 2017, and can be found on Peacock in the U.S. and Disney+ outside of it.
The first season followed Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson), a newly retired cop looking into the Mercedes killings committed years earlier. Unbeknownst to him, the murders were committed by Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway), a misanthropic retail employee, who's still stalking Hodges and lives with his incestuous, alcoholic mother Deborah (Kelly Lynch). Events bring Hodges into contact with Teen Genius Jerome Robinson (Jharrel Jerome), who's set for Harvard, oddball genius Holly Gibney (Justine Lupe), and Holly's aunt Janey Patterson (Mary-Louise Parker).
The second season picks up six months after the first, with Hartsfield in a coma in a hospital bed, under the care of suspicious doctor Felix Babineau (Jack Huston) and his controlling wife Cora (Tessa Ferrer).
The third season moves away from the Hartsfield story. It concluded in October 2019.
Tropes
- Adaptation Personality Change: Mostly minor ones, but still present. The TV series presents Bill as being both grumpier and more psychologically damaged in the aftermath of Brady's killing spree and his own failure to bring Brady to justice. In addition - and perhaps mercifully - the show completely adapts out Jerome's "Tyrone" persona. However, some of the most prominent changes can be seen in Brady himself. In the book, King establishes him as a dead-set, bigoted sociopath, whereas Show!Brady is more classically insane, displaying the tiniest flashes of compassion in his madness and apparently possessing legitimate affection for his coworker Lou (Freddi in the books). He's also much more openly repulsed by his relationship with his mother, actually rejecting her advances at one point.
- Adaptational Heroism: The TV series adapts out most of Bill's vengeful, hard-headed drive to catch Brady on his own, making him seem vastly less reckless and selfish than his book counterpart.
- Adaptational Nationality: In order to reconcile Brendan Gleeson's unshakable Irish accent with his character, the TV series presents Bill as an Irish immigrant who came to the United States in his late teens.
- Adaptational Villainy: Countering Show!Brady's less-psychopathic personality, the TV series gives him a much higher body count (eighteen at City Center as opposed to eight, plus his onscreen murders of Ryan Springhill and Anthony Frobisher). He also deliberately kills Janey, rather than doing it by accident, as another means to drive Bill toward suicide.
- Age Lift: Justine Lupe's Holly is considerably younger than her book counterpart (31 as opposed to 45), likely as a means to emphasize her eventual role as a surrogate daughter figure to Hodges and to remove the books' ambiguity as to the nature of their relationship.
- Asshole Victim: Along with Brady's abusive mother, Deborah, show-only character Ryan Springhill is an unstable, loud-mouthed Neo-Nazi and homophobe whose brutal vehicular homicide at Brady's hands is entirely more satisfying than it should be.
- Death by Adaptation:
- Anthony Frobisher - Brady's stuck-up, casually homophobic boss - survives the book without a scratch. In the series, Brady ambushes him in his own home and rather graphically caves his head in with a hammer.
- Pete, Hodges ex-partner, survives the books and is mentioned as alive in The Outsider (2018), dies in the premiere episode of season 2.
- Evil Sounds Deep: Harry Treadaway as Brady. It's considerably less pronounced and dramatic than most examples, but his voice is still a low, unnervingly calm baritone.
- Improvised Weapon: Thanks to the omission of the Slapper, the TV series instead shows us a rather unconventional use for a cast-bronze bulldog statuette. Brady is given this lesson.
- Named After First Instalment: The show as a whole is called Mr Mercedes, the title of the first book. It becomes an Artifact Title in stages: Brady's Mercedes killing spree isn't overly relevant after the first season, and the second season concludes Brady's story altogether.
- Pet the Dog: Despite being an unrepentant murderer nearly completely devoid of empathy, Show!Brady seems to legitimately regard his coworker Lou as something of a friend. He makes an effort to cheer her up when she's run ragged by a flagrantly homophobic regular at their workplace...and later murders the customer in question to make him pay for ridiculing the two of them. It becomes Kick the Dog when Brady stabs Lou and seriously injures her.
- Shout-Out: Because the TV series omits Hodges' Happy Slapper, Holly instead caves Brady's head in using an animal figurine.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Though they die in End of Watch, Felix and Cora Babineau both survive the show.
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Tear Jerker: In the show, Bill Hodges has his daughter sent to prison in an effort to straighten her out. As he's watching her board the prison bus he's saying 'Don't cry' is he talking to himself or to her. - Ungrateful Bastard: In the TV series, Jerome finds out that his father is struggling financially and takes it upon himself to buy some groceries to help out. When his father finds out he goes crazy and angrily chews Jerome out for “taking his job”. Even if his frustration is understandable the way he vents it makes him seem both very ungrateful and needlessly harsh.
