Mildred Pierce

HBO is releasing a new mini-series, Mildred Pierce, which features award-winning actress Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce, Melissa Leo and Evan Rachel Wood. It's a period piece and seems to be a tailor-made, guaranteed lock for a slew of Emmys. However, the reviews on it seem to be rather mixed.

Maureen Ryan of AOL's TV Squad, and formerly of The Chicago Tribune, says "I came away from HBO's five-part series with a great deal of respect for Winslet's impassioned performance, but so many other aspects of 'Mildred Pierce' worked against Winslet's naturalistic style that parts of the miniseries ended up being, frankly, a slog." You can read her full review here.

James Poniewozik of Time says "Haynes is trying some interesting things here, in particular, making a film that wants to update the picture of a generation of women from the way Hollywood portrayed them in, well, movies like Mildred Pierce. He does this not by making Winslet's Mildred an icon, but just a person, with flaws and uncertainties as well as deep strength and an unapologetic sense of what she wants." His full review is available here.

Alan Sepinwall of Hitfix.com makes this comment in his review, "So it's nearly six hours of an otherwise smart, likable, admirable character consistently doing stupid things for the benefit of someone who's completely insufferable - and doing it in a way that doesn't track with anything else we see about our heroine. You can blame Winslet, or Haynes, or both, but something doesn't fit, and it wrecks everything, above and beyond spending so much time on a story that could have been just as satisfyingly told at half the length."

Rolling Stone's Peter Travers makes this remark, "What can you say in a few words about a five-hour HBO miniseries adapted from James M. Cain's landmark 1941 novel that follows the rise and fall of an independent Los Angeles woman during the Great Depression? Let's try "perfection," which is what director Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven) achieves in his loyal, lyrical adaptation. Apply "magnificent" to the tour de force Kate Winslet delivers in the title role, a divorced mother who climbs from waitress to tycoon." His full review can be found here.

Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times says, "Todd Haynes' five-part HBO miniseries "Mildred Pierce" is not just great television, it's a revelation." Her full review is available here.

The one consensus that everyone seems to come to is that Kate Winslet is fantastic in the title role. Beyond that, opinions seem split down the middle.

Are you looking forward to HBO's new version? Or do you think Hollywood should have left well enough alone and stuck with Joan Crawford's Academy Award-winning original?