{alltv} Mireille Enos dead on in 'The Killing'

Mireille Enos must have heard some bizarre pronunciations of her first name through the years.

"Oh goodness, I think I got Mary Lou once," said Enos, who grew up in Texas. "I don't even know how they got there."

Enos' mom is from France, so that's why she wound up with the delicate French monicker Mireille. But names aside, Enos surely will become more of a familiar face with her lead role in The Killing, a new series from AMC that kicks off with a two-hour premiere on Sunday, April 3.

AMC is the same network that brought us Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, so there's a pedigree there. And while you may recognize Enos from her dual role on Big Love, The Killing represents a substantial leap forward in terms of profile and screen time.

"Big Love was big fun and it's an actor's dream to play twins (Jodean and Kathy Marquart)," Enos said. "But this is a whole different thing."

Based on the Danish series Forbrydelsen, The Killing - which was shot in Vancouver - is set in Seattle and weaves together three story-lines that connect to the murder of a teenage girl. Enos plays Sarah Linden, a homicide detective in the Seattle Police Department whose intense methods as a "silent watcher" allow her to see things other cops miss. But there's nothing supernatural going on, is there?

"No," Enos said flatly, prompting laughter.

"I think it goes back to this intuition. She somehow can see into people's souls and hearts. She can understand the criminal mind, and she just gets drawn. But it's not supernatural."

Thank goodness. There are enough of those shows already. There are enough police shows already, too. But what jumps out as different about The Killing is the low-voltage electricity of Enos herself. "I'm not patterning (Sarah) after anything I've seen," Enos said.

"She's a deeply intelligent, deeply private woman. She has an uncanny intuition about this kind of work, which is what keeps her in it, but it also makes happiness hard to choose in her life."

Enos plays the "silent" Sarah so well that one of the few unconvincing parts of The Killing is the side-story that she has a doting fiance (played by Callum Keith Rennie) waiting for her and her pre-teen son to move from gloomy Seattle to sunny California. Frankly, Sarah's fiance and son seem like unnecessary, clunky add-ons to the narrative.

Sarah might, in fact, be tempted to leave her job and "choose happiness," but in her case we just don't believe happiness would equate to traditional domestic bliss.

"We meet Sarah at a moment where she's trying to decide what the rest of her life will be," Enos explained. "Will she choose this (her current job), which is where her gifts lie? Or will she choose something simpler, but with more joy?"

It's hypnotic watching Sarah work, so we hope she doesn't choose happiness any time soon, as awful as that sounds.

This role has the potential to make Mary Lou Enos - oops, we mean Mireille Enos - a household name.