The Cutprice Guignol

Deadloch is one of my favourite shows of the last ten years. Which you would no doubt have noticed if you came across my review of season one, which I still stand by to this day – it’s brilliant, witty, subversive, a crime drama comedy that takes each aspect of that descriptor seriously, a credit to the already-iconic creators Kate McLennan and Kate McCarthy.

And I have been gnashing at the bit in my years-long wait for this second season, and now, it’s finally here – and, honestly, it looks like it might be the last one we get of the show, judging by the round-up that closes it out. And I haven’t been the only thing gnashing these last few years – the second season opens with a half-eaten chunk of a man’s leg being found in a crocodile’s mouth, and Dulcie (Kate Box) and Eddie (Madeleine Sami) take a trip out of Deadloch to try and get to the bottom of her one-time police partner. From there, we’re drawn into a conspiracy revolving around protected wildlife, a lesbian smut novel, and the town of Barra’s Creek.

The only real issue with this second season is the episode count, which, with two less than season one, lacks some of the excellent world-building and sense of community that the extra ninety minutes or so allowed them the first time around. The setting of the second season, Barra Creek in the Northern Territories, is Eddie’s hometown and a reflection of so much of the kind of person that she has grown up to be – in the same way that Deadloch reflected much of Dulcie’s social standing, Barra Creek does for Eddie, and I wish we’d had more time with it. As someone who grew up in a place strikingly similar to Barra Creek (just replace crocodiles with wild boars and they’re indistinguishable), the small community that is functionally deranged to an outside perspective but has just about held it together for long enough to justify not addressing any of their obvious problems could have made for an even richer setting with a bit more time to delve into it. Similarly, the plot screams by this season, especially in the last two episodes, which burn through plot points at an insane rate which would surely have benefitted from allowing them a bit more time to breathe, with a highly-touted Luke Hemsworth performance concertinaed into just a handful of scenes.

Even with the limited runtime for this second season, McLennan and McCartney manage to cram it with great character work and a fun, distinct criminal conspiracy that unravels through crocodile corpses and mascot costumes. I particularly loved Cath, Dulcie’s partner, this season, with Alicia Gardiner given a bit more space to delve into her (literally, in the form of one particularly enthusiastic masturbation session) – we met them in the first season shortly after Dulcie’s affair, and Cath’s strained, often even possessive behaviour was understandable but often abrasive. Seeing her relax in this season, her wit and warmth coming through in waves, gives the season’s close even more of a punch.

It’s enormously fun to spend the season with Dulcie and Eddie as a proper duo, the chemistry between Box and Sami at the absolute heart of the show from moment one – I love the way this season builds them up to break them down as a friendship, wrapping it into this story about Dulcie’s identity becoming wrapped up in her job to the detriment of the most important people in her life. I’m always a huge fan of stories that centre a platonic relationship at their heart, and the warmth between Box and Sami sells every second of this. My favourite moment of the season comes in the form of Dulcie on the phone to Eddie in a car, having a meltdown about the terrible friend she has been and the thrush outbreak under her breasts, so completely and utterly true to the show it feels like a distillation of everything Deadloch has established itself to be.

And Deadloch has always been a show about privilege and oppression, an aspect of Australian culture that I’m glad McCartney and McLennan have kept so central to this story. The most interesting new character in this second season came as part of one of these storylines, in the form of Pat (a brilliant Genevieve Morris), a cop local to Barra Creek who is drawing up on retirement when the bodies start to show up – and the way that she represents an institutional and even benevolent racism to the community is downright brilliant. At first, she’s presented to us as a decent woman, one generally invested in the wellbeing of her community and protecting the people in it – she extends kindness and understanding to a man about to commit a violent crime, reminding him that she’s known him since he was ten and that he doesn’t need to do this to himself, inviting him into the cruiser and letting him select a song for the ride back to town. Which is all well and good, until we see the way she treats a young Aboriginal boy, removed from his father’s care by law enforcement, who does not instantly offer her the respect and warmth she feels she deserves – or, rather, how she doesn’t treat him. All that understanding, all that magnanimity, it’s forgotten as she warns him that, at ten years old, he has reached the age of criminal responsibility in Australia, the very same age she quoted to the man she helped. The way this racism manifests – not just as hostility to people of colour, but in incomparable benevolence and understanding offered to white people – is insidious and easy to dismiss, but Deadloch makes sure we don’t miss those connections.

I can’t help but hope we’ll get another season at some point in the future, because I’ve come to love these characters so damn much, but if this is the last we get of Deadloch, then it’s a hell of a note to go out on – accomplished, satisfying, and distinct, these two seasons are going on my permanent re-watch rotation for the forseeable future.

What did you think of this second season? How did it stand up to the first, and what would you like to see out of a third season if we got one? Let me know in the comments below!

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(header image via Mashable)