Leave it to Frances McDormand to double down on the abrasive cantankerousness of the title character of Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which traces the middle to late years of a no-nonsense math teacher living in a small town on the coast of Maine. As Olive Kitteridge, McDormand is all eye rolls, harrumphs, and sharp quips (especially toward spoiled little kids), but she also taps into the inner distress (and latent depression) that makes Olive who she is. It’s a fearless portrayal of someone who is fully human. Director Lisa Cholodenko (Laurel Canyon, The Kids Are All Right) employs a heightened style—intense colors, a close camera—that reflects Olive’s thin skin, where her feelings are all on the surface, but the technique also has the unfortunate effect of making the town as a whole feel unreal. Still, she’s generous enough of a filmmaker—and benefits from structuring this as a four-part mini-series—to make space for the interior lives of many other characters: Richard Jenkins as Olive’s long-suffering, pharmacist husband; Zoe Kazan as his naive assistant; and Peter Mullan as a fellow teacher angling for Olive’s affections. Bill Murray swoops in for the final installment, as a weary widower Olive meets on her daily walk, and gives nothing less than one of his finest performances, playing a man staving off his aging body and emotional exhaustion with a few remaining gasps of wit. Olive Kitteridge, even with a gently nourishing Carter Burwell score, is hardly feel-good material, but it is true—as refreshingly, caustically honest about facing another day as Olive is herself.