--- title: "Mildred Pierce" year: 2011 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/mildred-pierce" fi1m_score: 70 critics_score: 67 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-17T13:00:09.461878+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T13:00:34.518009+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Mildred Pierce (2011) Created by Todd Haynes · MPA TV-MA · Drama **Fi1m score: 70** · Critics 67 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* Every pie is perfect, every room is lit like late afternoon, and the daughter would test a saint > Todd Haynes films James M. Cain’s novel slowly, in honeyed light, without the murder the 1945 film added, and Kate Winslet earns every frame. It is handsome and often moving; it is also five hours long, and the daughter at its centre never adds up. ## Synopsis Glendale, California, 1931. Mildred Pierce (Kate Winslet) bakes pies in her kitchen and sells them to neighbours because her husband Bert (Brían F. O’Byrne) has stopped earning and started seeing another woman. She throws him out. Left with two daughters and a mortgage, she looks for work and finds nothing but waitressing, which she considers beneath her; she takes a job anyway and hides the uniform from her elder daughter Veda (Morgan Turner), who despises anything common. Her neighbour Lucy Gessler (Melissa Leo) tells her to stop apologising for herself, Bert’s old partner Wally Burgan (James LeGros) hovers with offers, and Mildred begins to plan a restaurant of her own. ## Review Todd Haynes has gone back to James M. Cain’s novel and taken the murder out. The 1945 film with Joan Crawford put a shooting at the front and told the rest in flashback; Cain never wrote one, and Haynes and his co-writer Jonathan Raymond leave it out. What remains is five episodes, roughly five hours, about a woman in Glendale, California, who bakes pies for money in 1931, turns the pies into a restaurant, and spends everything she makes trying to be loved by a daughter who cannot stand her. It is handsome, it is slow, and it is worth the time if you have it. Anyone waiting for the gun will wait all week. Kate Winslet plays Mildred without a flattering angle in sight. She is filmed rolling dough, scrubbing counters, counting change and carrying four plates at once; her hands are never idle and her face is always working out a sum. Mildred would rather be seen dead than seen in a waitress’s uniform, and when the job is the only one going she takes it and hides the uniform in a drawer. Winslet lets us see the humiliation go in, and then goes back to carrying plates. Edward Lachman shoots it as if the sun had been set at four in the afternoon and left there. Everything is amber, dust and pale green, and he keeps putting the camera on the far side of a window or a screen door, so that we watch Mildred through glass as often as not. Mark Friedberg’s Glendale is a row of small stucco houses with the paint going, and Monte Beragon’s place in Pasadena is large, dark and half empty. Ann Roth puts Mildred in housedresses washed too often and then, when the money comes, in furs that fit slightly wrong. It is slow, and we should be plain about how slow. Camilla Toniolo and Affonso Gonçalves let scenes run to their natural stop, and Carter Burwell’s score, a few spare notes of piano and strings, is held back for such long stretches that when it arrives it feels like the weather changing. The second episode closes on a sequence we will not describe, played almost without music, and we sat through the credits without moving. Then the third hour came and we caught ourselves looking at the clock, and we were bored, and we resented it. Haynes has earned the right to take his time; he has not always earned the time he takes. The trouble, and every version of this story has had it, is Veda. Morgan Turner plays the child with a chilly correctness, tidying her mother’s grammar and sneering at the neighbours, and she is frightening in the way clever children are. Evan Rachel Wood takes over for the final two episodes and plays the grown Veda’s cruelty as boredom. But we are asked to believe this girl was made by that woman in that house, and across five hours we kept looking for the moment it happened and never found it. On screen she is simply there, awful and unexplained, and the series does not seem to think it owes us a reason. The men are written better than usual. Guy Pearce gives Monte, a Pasadena heir with an old name and no income, a lazy charm that goes sour the moment Mildred picks up the bill. Brían F. O’Byrne’s Bert, the husband she throws out in the first episode, is decent and beaten and keeps turning up. James LeGros’s Wally Burgan is always in the kitchen when there is something to be had, Melissa Leo, as the neighbour Lucy Gessler, gets the best lines, and Mare Winningham, running the restaurant floor as Ida, is in fewer scenes than she deserves. Against Haynes’s own work it sits below [*Far from Heaven*](https://film.one/film/far-from-heaven) (2002), which Lachman also shot and which did in under two hours what this does in five: put a woman in a carefully made house and let the furniture tell us what she was not permitted to want. Watch this one in two or three sittings, on winter evenings, when the light on screen will be the warmest thing in the house. If by the fourth hour you want to shake Mildred, you have understood the series; so does everyone in it. *Fi1m score 70, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics come out in favour, though not by a wide margin. The praise gathers almost entirely around Kate Winslet, whose unglamorous, closely observed Mildred is admired even by the reviews that dislike the series as a whole. Evan Rachel Wood’s daughter draws a second cluster of approval, and Todd Haynes’s faithfulness to the James M. Cain novel, his period detail and his attention to the plain business of baking and waitressing are noted with approval by several. Pace is where they part. Even the admirers concede the five hours move slowly; the sceptics find that the plodding early stretch never earns its length. The Hollywood Reporter goes furthest, arguing that the central mother-daughter relationship is not believable and that the melodrama never becomes compelling. Empire misses the heat of the Joan Crawford film. The spread is wide, from warm to dismissive, with Winslet the one point on which all agree. ### Reviews we read (6) - **The Times**, Tim Teeman (90/100, inferred): The five-hour miniseries is a dark-hearted treat of slow, relentless suffering masterfully portrayed by Winslet. Haynes luxuriates in style and character contradictions for a rewarding epic. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/winslets-mildred-pierce-is-a-masterclass-in-suffering-6kq3vv0ltmk) - **Variety**, Brian Lowry (90/100, inferred): The critic praises the ambitious five-part HBO miniseries as big, beautiful, and unlike anything else on TV, noting its faithful return to the James M. Cain novel and Haynes' meticulous attention to period detail and class issues. The strong cast, especially Winslet and Wood, and the unhurried but ultimately absorbing storytelling are highlighted as strengths. [Read](https://variety.com/2011/film/reviews/mildred-pierce-1117944847/) - **The AV Club**, Donna Bowman (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the miniseries a compelling and immersive adaptation that makes Mildred a sympathetic yet flawed protagonist. She singles out the superb balance of melodrama with concrete details of baking, waitressing, and restaurant management. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/mildred-pierce-part-one-and-part-two-1798167788) - **Empire**, William Thomas (60/100, inferred): Todd Haynes' faithful adaptation of James M. Cain's novel goes for the slow boil, opening with pie-baking and taking five hours to get truly torrid. It could have done with some of the melodrama of the Joan Crawford film; at points, if it were moving any slower it would start playing backwards. But the design is spot-on, and both Kate Winslet and Evan Rachel Wood are great, as the social-climbing housewife and her angel-voiced, demon-hearted daughter. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/mildred-pierce-review-2/) - **The Guardian**, Lucy Mangan (50/100, inferred): The series looks sumptuous but plods with not enough happening early on. Winslet's nuanced, unglamorous performance is a standout that draws viewers in over time. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2011/jun/24/kate-winslet-mildred-pierce) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Tim Goodman (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the miniseries slow-moving with a central mother-daughter relationship that lacks believability, despite strong performances from Winslet and others. It trades noir elements for melodrama and struggles to make the emotional core compelling over its long runtime. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/mildred-pierce-169823/) ## Details - **Created by:** Todd Haynes - **Director:** Todd Haynes - **Writer:** Todd Haynes, Jonathan Raymond - **Teleplay:** Todd Haynes, Jonathan Raymond - **Novel:** James M. Cain - **Cinematography:** Edward Lachman - **Editor:** Camilla Toniolo, Affonso Gonçalves - **Music:** Carter Burwell - **Production design:** Mark Friedberg - **Costume design:** Ann Roth - **Cast:** Kate Winslet as Mildred Pierce; Guy Pearce as Monte Beragon; Evan Rachel Wood as Veda Pierce; Brían F. O'Byrne as Bert Pierce; Melissa Leo as Lucy Gessler; James LeGros as Wally Burgan; Mare Winningham as Ida Corwin; Marin Ireland as Letty - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 27 March 2011 - **Genres:** Drama - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oufmYeBbyIU ## Where to watch in the US - HBO Max: streaming - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Hulu: add-on, hd - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy, sd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - SAG Awards 2012: Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie (nominated); Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie (won) - Primetime Emmy Awards 2011: Outstanding Cinematography for a Miniseries or Movie (nominated); Outstanding Costumes for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (nominated); Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special (nominated); Outstanding Miniseries or Movie (nominated); Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music (nominated); Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie (nominated); Outstanding Casting for a Miniseries, Movie, or a Special (won); Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie (won); Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie (won) - Satellite Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film 2011: Satellite Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film (won) - Satellite Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film 2011: Satellite Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film (won) - Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film 2011: Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film (nominated) - Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film 2011: Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film (nominated) - TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries and Specials 2011: TCA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries and Specials (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Mildred Pierce* (1945): The Curtiz version, with the murder Haynes removed and Joan Crawford’s shoulders doing the rest - *Far from Heaven* (2002), Fi1m 87: Haynes and Lachman again, the same colours, a woman in a house, half the length — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/far-from-heaven.md) - *Autumn Sonata* (1978): Bergman puts a mother and daughter in one house for a night and lets them talk - *Olive Kitteridge* (2014), Fi1m 84: Another long portrait of a difficult woman, Frances McDormand this time, and it earns the hours — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/olive-kitteridge.md) - *Stella Dallas* (1937): Barbara Stanwyck sacrifices everything for a daughter who is, unusually, worth it --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/mildred-pierce