Boxing Clever: Deadloch
Every week, Michael Telfer – aka Mike TV – recommends a box set to crack open. This week’s choice mixes sandals, swearing and a giant seal that eats tongues.
When Deadloch was recommended to me by a friend last year, she provided scant detail or description other than “Just watch it, and thank me later”, and so I had the rare experience of firing up a box set with no idea of what I was about to watch. Which may be the best way to blunder into this brilliant, quirky one-of-a-kind show.
And if you want to stop reading here and fire up the first season I won’t take it personally. Go for it, thank me later.
For those who need a bit more convincing, Deadloch is an Australian comedy murder mystery series, which debuted on Amazon Prime in 2023. When a dead body turns up in the sleepy coastal town of Deadloch it sets a fire under the previously peaceful existence and threatens to tear the whole place apart.
Fastidious local policewoman Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) is reluctantly teamed up with no-nonsense (or no shit, as she would undoubtedly say) Darwin based detective Eddie Redcliffe (Madeline Sami) who is parachuted into Deadloch to provide homicide expertise.
Pairing two contrasting personalities – in this case the diligent, by the book, happily married lesbian Collins with the hair-trigger impulsive, radioactively tempered Redcliffe – is a well-trodden trope in police dramas, but the sheer gulf between the characters and approaches of the two policewomen in Deadloch gives them an irresistible chemistry.
Eddie gets some of the best lines I’ve ever heard in a TV show, but unfortunately none of them are repeatable on a Sunday morning. Imagine In The Thick Of It’s Malcolm Tucker played by a horny Tasmanian devil and you’re in the right ballpark.
Eddie is very cagey about the reasons for her being farmed out from the Darwin PD, but very clear that she wants to wrap up the case and get out of Deadloch double quick. To her obvious frustration however, more bodies are discovered and the unlikely duo realise they are on the hunt for a serial killer.
Aided by Abby (Nina Oyama) and Sven (Tom Ballard), the keen but green staff of the Deadloch PD, they ensure no stone is unturned and everyone in the sleepy town is a potential suspect, from Dulcie’s possessive and permanently bouncy wife Cath (Alicia Gardiner) to homophobic entrepreneur Phil McGangus (Shaun Martindale).
As the body count steadily rises, putting the annual “Winter Feastival” in jeopardy, a grudging respect builds between the two policewomen and they realise they need to join forces to crack the case. Thankfully they are equally funny as a duo whether they are locking horns or high fiving.
Deadloch’s irreverently brilliant take on the police procedural makes most other crime dramas look starchy and pedestrian in comparison, and the show has slowly become a worldwide hit, with a slow burn success that has seen it reach the top 10 on Amazon Prime in over 165 countries, including the UK and the US.
The long awaited second season dropped on Prime on March 20 and sees Eddie return home to Darwin to tackle a case much closer to home, with Dulcie and Cath hot on her heels in their motorhome and Luke, the eldest of the Hemsworth brothers, popping up as charismatic wildlife park owner Jason Wade.
The second series starts immediately after the end of the first, and viewers hoping for more body parts turning up in animals, outback family feuds and even more generous amounts of swearing won’t be disappointed. There’s plenty of life left in the Dulcie and Eddie partnership and hopefully we haven’t seen the last of them.
All episodes of Deadloch are available to stream on Amazon Prime.