Created by Kate McCartney & Kate McLennan
Written by Kate McCartney, Kate McLennan, Kim Wilson, Christian White, Anchuli Felicia King, Kristy Fisher, Madeleine Sami
Directed by Ben Chessell, Gracie Otto, Beck Cole
Starring Kate Box, Madeleine Sami, Nina Oyama, Alicia Gardiner
Saying that DeadLoch is an Australian comedy is a bit like saying the Sopranos is a crime show. That’s not to say that DeadLoch has the stellar acting, writing and complexity of the Sopranos (what does?) but that there is, in fact, a whole lot more going on than being just “an Australian comedy.”
DeadLoch is a fictional town in Tasmania, a place so remote that it rarely gets hot in the summer and can get very chill in the winter. This is very alien to most Australians. You can even find snow there in June and July.
The town has about 2,000 residents, split fairly evenly between “the locals” who are mostly fishermen and sawmill personnel, and the new age contingent, who are mostly socially progressive and often aggressively lesbian. It doesn’t take much imagination to divine that there may be some social conflict there.
Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) is the head cop there and for five years, she’s mostly concerned herself with small town stuff like parking tickets and lost dogs. While seen as part of the feminist tide that has invaded the town, she has some grudging acceptance from the locals because she is even-handed and fairly diplomatic. Part of her restraint stems from her partner, Cath York (Alicia Gardner), who doesn’t want her doing anything more stressful and demanding than dealing with complaints about noisy neighbors, or overseeing the painting of parking stripes. It’s not too much of a spoiler to point out that Cath is manipulative and demanding, and when the plot turns dark, she becomes a major impedance to Dulcie.
When the first body turns up, nobody, including Dulcie, really knows what to do. Dulcie isn’t even notified until 7 the next morning because Cath has demanded that before then is her “private time.”
All the Hobart detectives are busy (both of them) so they tell Dulcie that she’s in charge until they can bring in a detective from Darwin. It’s a strange choice, since Darwin is about as far from Tasmania as you can get and still be in Australia, with a social climate as wildly different from Tasmania’s as the physical one is. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s kind of Australia’s answer to Fresno.
Dulcie is taking an extremely methodical and meticulous approach to the killing, with a whiteboard filled with connections and data.
The Darwin detective, Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami), shows up, and she is brassy, obnoxious, simplistic, and clearly just wants to get the case cleared so she can get the hell out of there right away. The working relationship is defined when she sweeps up to the white board, erases it, and in a primary-grade scrawl write the name of her favorite suspect. Redcliffe has deep scorn for yokels, and doesn’t like ‘lezzies’ and in short order manages to alienate the entire town.
And then the bodies start to pile up.
It’s a fairly amazing show in that it manages to be a taut, suspenseful murder mystery, very dark, and funny as hell, often all at once.
It’s still running, and episode six (of eight) just dropped today. It’s showing no sign of slowing down or falling apart.
Now on Amazon Prime video.