Olive Kitteridge

HBO consistently produces high quality TV and the latest proof comes from director Lisa Cholodenko's four hour miniseries adaptation of Elizabeth Strout's 2008 novel Olive Kitteridge (2014). The hallmark of the show is the writing-it is a very intelligent film with a tragic story to tell. It stars Frances McDormand, at her best, in the unglamorous role of a straight talking woman without a filter that seems to be chronically unhappy. Her counterpart, her husband Henry (the always reliable Richard Jenkins) is a kindly pharmacist and forgiving soul that seems to be a mismatch for Olive. Essentially it covers about 25 years of Olive's life as experiences problems of depression, bereavement, jealousy, and friction with family members and friends. There are mental health issues surrounding several characters in the film, Olive's father killed himself with a shotgun. A neighbor suffers from depression and another is suspected of killing himself as well, as his father also killed himself with a shotgun and he has an obsession with  John Berryman, a poet obsessed with his own father's suicide by shotgun and leave this quote from one of his poems the night he dies by hitting a tree while driving hoe from a local bar:  "Save us from shotguns & father's suicides" from Berryman's "Dream Song 235." The film has a great ensemble cast with accurate Maine accents and is sustained by the lead actors who more than carry their weight in the drama. It was definitely one of the best things on TV in 2014.