You Can Now Chat With Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes

Jonathan Barkan |

Aug 10, 2017

Last night saw the premiere of “Mr. Mercedes” on AT&T’s Audience Network. As a way of promoting the series, which is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, Audience has whipped up a fun interactive gag where you can “chat” with Mr. Mercedes via Facebook’s Messenger service. The bot will ask you multiple questions and try to play with you by hinting that it’s going to share intimate details of your answers on your Facebook wall. If you want to try it out for yourself, simply click here.

Starring Brendan Gleeson and Harry Treadaway, the 10-episode “Mr. Mercedes” was written, directed, and produced by the team of Jack Bender, David E. Kelley, and King himself.

Gleeson stars as Bill Hodges, a detective way past his prime who gets his groove back when the psychopathic killer from a high-profile cold case re-emerges to mock him. Hodges is still bothered by the one case he couldn’t solve, a tragedy where innocents waiting to get into a job fair were maimed and murdered by a man in a clown mask who mowed them down in a stolen Mercedes. But that life is just a memory, and most of Hodges’ now sedentary existence revolves around beer and high-calorie food.

Old wounds are reopened when Hodges begins receiving strange letters, videos, and emails with a wicked smiley face from the “Mercedes Killer,” aka Brady Hartsfield (Treadaway), a computer store clerk who has an incestuous relationship with his mother (Kelly Lynch) and holds down a second job as an ice cream vendor to keep an eye on Hodges and his associates.

The show also co-stars Jharrel Jerome, Mary-Louise Parker, Justine Lupe, Scott Lawrence, Ann Cusack, Robert Stanton, Holland Taylor, and Breeda Wool. Look for it on August 9th on Audience Network, available to DirecTV subscribers.