The Emmy-nominated crime comedy swaps chilly Tasmania for the sticky Top End – and all its croc-related misadventures
There’s no doubt which principal character reflects the heart, soul and warped humour of Deadloch, the darkly comedic and wigged-out police procedural created and written by Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan. It’s certainly not Kate Box’s senior sergeant Dulcie Collins: a generally calm and considered detective who doesn’t rush to judgment. It’s her partner Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami), a thunderously loud, incongruous, decorum-breaking force of nature who doesn’t so much speak as screech, howl and bluster, as if trying to strangle the air itself, particle by particle.
As do several characters in this show: a well-paced, rambunctious, occasionally laugh-out-loud production that, like the first season, both meets and subverts genre expectations – sometimes in sly, wink-wink ways, sometimes with the grace of an elephant cannonballing into a kiddie pool. Directors Beck Cole and Gracie Otto bring verve, irreverence and a veneer of grotesquerie, echoed in Deadloch’s damp and queasy colour grading, which looks slightly off, as though the show itself is sprouting mould.
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