Deadloch review: the new season of this Aussie crime comedy is even funnier

The first season of Deadloch had so many targets in its sights it feels a little impolite to suggest it didn’t hit all of them dead centre.

Co-creators Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney (of The Katering Show and Get Krack!n fame) put together a parody of small town murder mysteries that took aim at the genre’s misogyny (and sexism in general) while also packing the cast with comedy characters and building the story around a mismatched pair of cops who avoided all the cliches.

Meanwhile, it was also a straightforward small town mystery complete with loathsome bad guys and real dramatic stakes. If focusing on one angle sometimes meant something else fell by the wayside for a while, the end result was still one of the more ambitious and impressive local series of recent times. And now they’re back to do it all over again.

How’s the humidity in Barra Creek?

Last season ended with detectives Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) and Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami) solving all the mysteries in the Tasmanian town of Deadloch and heading north to tackle the only puzzle left: the death of Eddie’s former police partner Bushy.

Things pick up with them hitting Darwin, where things get both humid and complicated. A dead croc’s been found with human remains inside it, there are a couple of missing backpackers, and Eddie hasn’t been completely open about how she left things when she took off for Tasmania.

While Darwin police superintendent Col (Damien Garvey) is surprisingly well-adjusted, the cops on the backpacker case are a collection of dodgy group-chat loving dicks, as you might expect. So, there are plenty of overlooked clues just lying around for Dulcie, who’s been given the job of ID’ing the body part, while Eddie is surprisingly keen to uncover the identity of the dead croc.

Turns out the small town of Barra Creek has a lot of secrets – and a lot of locals who’d like it to stay that way.

A very twisty-turny mystery

There’s plenty going on here, and it takes a little while to settle into a comfortable storytelling rhythm. The first episode especially is a bit all over the place. Dulcie repeatedly comes across story-progressing clues by accident or coincidence, while something that seems like it’ll be a big part of the season is rapidly sidelined early on, only to be re-introduced a few episodes in as… a big part of the season.

Things do settle down as the various mysteries become somewhat clearer, but the drop from eight episodes to six does seem to have compressed things a little. And Deadloch has always been a series with a lot on its plate: questions of land ownership, racial politics and the nature of policing itself weave in and out of the mystery side of things, while Eddie – who was an abrasive comedy character for much of Season 1 – gets a hefty dose of thoughtful backstory here.

The mystery soon focuses in on a pair of warring croc tour companies, both of which seem as awful as the other, albeit in slightly different ways (and with Luke Hemsworth’s arrogant Jason Wade heading up one of them).

Deadloch is not a series that goes for subtlety when it comes to its villains, so having an abundance of them does mean it’s a little harder to figure out whodunnit – though as is traditional with this kind of series, there are enough twists and turns to ensure that the mystery that ends up being solved is only distantly related to the mystery they started investigating.

ScreenHub: How to make an Australian crime series

Rapid-fire comedy anchored by solid leads

As for the comedy, it’s full-strength straight out the gate and doesn’t drop off unless it’s time for things take a turn for the serious. Much of the humour in the first season involved Eddie’s brash – to say the least – approach coming up hard against the subdued gloom of traditional Tasmanian noir; here she’s on her home turf, and it turns out there are plenty more like her back at home.

This pushes Dulcie into the outsider role, and her being the straight person – entirely in a comedic sense; Dulcie’s wife Cath (Alicia Gardiner) is right there with her, driving around a campervan and finding lesbians everywhere she turns – in a territory full of broad comedy characters works really well. Having forensic constable Abby (Nina Oyama) turn up later in the season also gives proceedings a boost.

The setting helps take the edge off Eddie, who’s as foul-mouthed as ever (at one stage, while being followed by a drone, yelling out ‘fuck off you hover cunt’). Only now she’s up against a community that at times makes her seem subdued, and we’re all looking Amber Darrell (Nikki Britton), whose antics as a croc tour guide set the tone right from the start.

On top of all that, Eddie’s emotional journey across the season turns out to be surprisingly moving, while Dulcie’s faced with a test or two of her own. The world of Deadloch can be a lot at times – Steve Bisley’s in this season too, by the way – but the two leads are a solid foundation from start to finish.

A third season where they just sit on a beach having a chat for six episodes would still be compelling viewing: after everything they’ve been through, they deserve a bit of a break.

All six episodes of Deadloch Season 2 will launch on 20 March on Prime Video.

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