Suranne Jones and Eve Best in MaryLand

MaryLand has Suranne Jones and Eve Best playing siblings

MaryLand, streaming in the U.S. on PBS, is a sibling relationship drama of only 3 episodes. Sisters Becca (Suranne Jones) and Rosaline (Eve Best) discover their mother’s secret life after her death far from home on the Isle of Man.

The MaryLand of the title refers to their mother Mary. When she dies, the two sisters head for the Isle of Man. Their father Richard (George Costigan) stays in England making plans for a funeral.

When Becca and Roseline arrive, they find a home owned by their mother and a whole other life she lived in secret. She had a gentleman friend, Pete (Hugh Quarshie), and a best friend, Cathy (Stockard Channing).

Their mother’s death had questions attached. The siblings were already confounded by her secret life and this news was even more disturbing.

The sisters had a rocky relationship. Each of them had issues of their own. They didn’t understand each other and had bitter feelings built on those misunderstandings.

In addition to starring, Suranne Jones also created the series with Anne-Marie O’Connor. The character she created for herself was insecure, unhappy with her marriage to Jim (Andrew Knott), and unsure who she was in the world.

Suranne Jones in MaryLand
This image sums up Becca’s personality

Roseline had been plagued with health problems all her life and resented Becca’s seemingly perfect situation.

While there were plenty of underlying themes of grief and shock and family, the main plotline was about how the sisters were going to find a way forward.

This was not a cheerful tale. Fraught relationships and grim events don’t make for many laughs. It was a chance to see two wonderful actors work together in emotionally powerful ways to explore the bonds of sisterhood. Each of the three episodes was beautifully directed by Susan Tully.

If you watch this mini-series, I’d love to hear your thoughts about it in the comments.

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8 responses to “MaryLand has Suranne Jones and Eve Best playing siblings”

  1. Joe Wynne Avatar
    Joe Wynne

    I saw it and liked it very much. The mystery drew me in, and the series of reveals was extremely effective in driving reactions and realizations from the daughters, who each had her own interesting arc, and kept me transfixed. This is the kind of series that makes TV great: Far away from standard formula, with depth and humanity. True, it was not obviously cheerful in the moment, but under the surface there was definitely optimism.

    1. Virginia DeBolt Avatar

      I agree it is great tv. We need more human drama like this one.

  2. Liz Avatar

    Agreed, a really well-done story. Reworking those fictions we tell ourselves over years is a lot of work, and worth re-examining. It doesn’t wrap up in real life quite as quickly as 3 episodes, but a good job by the cast & writers.

    1. Virginia DeBolt Avatar

      It’s hard to shake off resentments from childhood. The emotion and trust that went into it was really made clear by the two excellent actors.

  3. christopher swaby Avatar
    christopher swaby

    i really enjoyed this series, from start to finish. every character, every actor. families are complicated as are the humans who make up families – these actors captured the complexity beautifully.

  4. Stephen Sossaman Avatar

    I enjoyed Maryland, too, but feel that it was an opportunity missed. The story involves several uneasy universal relationship types that are always of interest: parents and children, siblings, spouses. We never tire of good art exploring the dark and difficult aspects of such relationships.

    Audiences likely expect confrontation scenes to be intense high points, but confrontation scenes work best when there is less reliance on anger and expressions of ego and hurt, than there is on revelations, explanations, confessions, and recognitions. Complaints and self-pity have to give way to thinking outside the self.

    Becca and Rosalind went off on frolics of their own, but neither diversion seemed to deepen our sense of their character. Becca’s drunken flirtation in the pub seemed out of character, and left her unchanged, just hung over. Rosalind’s flirtation with the handsome cab driver, a mild echo of a D. H. Lawrence lover, felt like the stuff of conventional romance novels.

    In a story whose plot centers on two sisters’ difficulties with their parents, one might expect Becca and the screenwriter to be more attentive to her own two daughters. They were treated as nuisances by their parents, and as stereotypes or props by the screenwriter (just selfies, and mild teenage self-absorption). I think real high school sisters would have been very alarmed by their parents’ anger and confusions, and been loud about it. Had the two young sisters differed about that chaos, we could have had an intriguing parallel to the older sisters.

    Oddly enough, in a story primarily about women (and written by women), the two most sympathetic characters were men: the cab driver (Jacob)and the mother’s lover (Hugh) were emotionally centered, supportive of women, good listeners, and quietly wise healers. Boring, maybe, but not actively annoying, as were Becca’s awful husband and awful father.

    Good acting got us through to the end and to the sisters’ reconciliation, which was awkward, but most reconciliations probably are awkward.

    1. Virginia DeBolt Avatar

      With only three episodes to develop character, it was a rush to the finish.

      1. Stephen Sossaman Avatar

        We agree on that, Virginia.

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