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Writer/director Todd Haynes has turned the classic "Mildred Pierce" into a five-part miniseries for HBO. But it's not a remake of the 1945 film for which Joan Crawford won a best-actress Oscar.

It is, instead, a faithful adaptation of the 1941 novel.

The film-noir movie, a murder mystery told through flashbacks, deviated significantly from the book, in which there is no murder at all.

"I'm a great admirer of the original film, but I was so startled and surprised reading the James M. Cain novel," Haynes said. That gave him a different perspective on the film, "which James M. Cain despised and claimed that it completely dispersed all of the dramatic tensions between mother and daughter."

There's enormous tension between Mildred (Kate Winslet) and her daughter, Veda, in the HBO miniseries.

"One of the things that really fascinated me the most when I read the script was this unbelievably intense relationship between Mildred and Veda," Winslet said. "It does, I think, teeter on the brink of obsession. Every mother-daughter relationship is complex and complicated for its own different set of reasons, but this one — it was just something else."

The story begins in 1931 Los Angeles as Mildred tosses her philandering husband, Bert (Brian F. O'Byrne), out of their house. She's not at all certain how she'll provide for their daughters, 11-year-old Veda (Morgan Turner) and 7-year-old Ray (Quinn McColgan). Jobs aren't easy to come by, particularly because Mildred doesn't want to lower herself to do menial work.

That class-consciousness is a trait Veda shares to an unhealthy degree.

Mildred eventually takes a job as a waitress, opens her own restaurant, builds a successful business and does everything she can for the incredibly ungrateful, manipulative and devious Veda.

"That character almost killed me," said Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Veda as a teenager and young adult. "She's warped at such an early age, especially because it does take place during the Depression and there's such a focus on class and money. I think it just gets to her in this way that she obsesses over and obsesses over just getting out and being in that upper class and not being like her mother."

"Mildred Pierce" is gorgeous to look at. The locations, costumes, makeup and cars are all authentic to the period (or look like it). It's the kind of lavish production you don't seen on TV much anymore, with the kind of pacing you almost never see — many scenes are more than five minutes long.

Winslet is as good as you'd expect the Oscar-winning actor to be, and she's in almost every scene. She gets great support from Melissa Leo (who just won an Oscar of her own for her role in "The Fighter"), Guy Pearce, James LeGros, O'Byrne, Mare Winningham, Wood and the rest of the large cast.

And there's no comparing Winslet's performance to Crawford's, as the film and the miniseries are so different. Winslet had never seen the movie and decided to stop watching it after the first five minutes.

"I had to honor the book," she said. "I had to be very true to the Mildred Pierce that is in that brilliant novel. I could feel almost immediately watching Joan Crawford's brilliant performance that what I was working toward with Todd was just something different. Not cleverer, better — none of that. It was just simply a different character."

A different character, and one perhaps that Cain, the writer, would recognize. —

'Mildred Pierce'

Parts 1 and 2 of the miniseries debut Sunday, March 27, from 10 p.m.-12:05 a.m. on HBO. Part 3 debuts Sunday, April 3, from 10:15-11:30 p.m. Parts 4 and 5 debut on Sunday, April 10, from 10 p.m.-12:30 a.m.