Brand new Mother and Son coming to the ABC in August
The ABC is thrilled to announce the highly anticipated, charming new eight part comedy, Mother and Son, will premiere on Wednesday 23 August at 8:30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
Combining the comedic talents of two of Australia’s most beloved comedians, Matt Okine and Denise Scott, this fresh re-imagining of an iconic family favourite is guaranteed to win the hearts of those who know and love the original and delight fans of contemporary Australian comedy.
Following a breakup from his long-suffering girlfriend, Dee (Andrea Demetriades), Arthur (Matt Okine) puts his future on hold to move back home with his widowed mother, Maggie (Denise Scott). Arthur and his older sister, Robbie (Angela Nica Sullen) – arguably ‘the favourite’ – attempt to care for Maggie, who may recently have almost burnt down the kitchen, but still runs circles around her children!
Joining the cast is Catherine Văn-Davies (The Twelve, Barons), with special appearances from Jean Kittson (The Big Gig, Fat Pizza), Virginia Gay (Safe Home, Winners and Losers), Tiriel Mora (Frontline, The Castle), Jenna Owen (Queen of Oz, Joe vs. Carole), Veronica Milsom (Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell, After the Verdict), Andrew McFarlane (Secret City, Glitch), Krew Boylan (Seriously Red), Justin Amankwah (Aftertaste, Shantaram) and TikTok sensation Zara Tate.
In collaboration with the original creator Geoffrey Atherden, re-creator and writer Matt Okine, Sarah Walker, Tristram Baumber and directors Neil Sharma (Heartbreak High) and Kriv Stenders (Bump, Red Dog) alongside the producing team at Wooden Horse, have created the perfect blend of wit, humour, and relatability, promising viewers an unforgettable and laughter-filled experience.
Mother and Son broadcasts weekly on ABC TV and streams on ABC iview.
TikTok stars! A main character who possibly has dementia! Re-created by Matt Okine! It’s not the future we were promised, but it’s the one we deserve.
Last week saw the final episodes of The Betoota Advocate Presents and Deadloch, two good shows made by funny people which were kind of serious. What does this tell us about the state of comedy in 2023?
For one it suggests that funders, broadcasters, streaming services, and whoever else gives the green light to these shows, seem perfectly happy to employ comedians, but not to employ them to make actual comedy. A TV show from the popular online comedy news site The Betoota Advocate, you’d think, would be along the lines of a topical sketch show or a current affairs parody. Like when The Chaser team moved from being the publishers of a cult newspaper to making parody election shows, and, later, semi-satirical prank shows.
Instead, The Betoota Advocate’s TV show consists of four serious Netflix-esque documentaries about scams and controversies from our recent past. They were good serious Netflix-esque documentaries about scams and controversies from our recent past, but they could have been made and hosted by anyone. If you’re getting Clancy Overell and Errol Parker from The Betoota Advocate to front them, you’re expecting some laughs, or at least something more than occasional commentary from two blokes in Akubras.
Having said that, when your topics include Hillsong and the Cronulla Riots, you’re already limiting the potential laughs. No one wants to see people making light of sexual abuse and race riots. The final episode, on the Fine Cotton Affair, looks at a more natural comic topic, especially when you get to the bit where they paint the horse, but even this was presented seriously.
Overall, and not as in Clancy, you have to wonder how this project turned out as it did. Were the Betoota team offered a TV show and then told “Sorry, we don’t have enough money for you to do a weekly topical sketch show. Why not make some one-offs?”. So, they ended up making these four documentaries? Or is there an active reluctance from broadcasters and streaming services to make comedy unless it’s dressed up as another popular format?
This brings us to Deadloch, the part comedy/part Nordic noir-esque murder mystery. Although, it at least feels like the kind of show that Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney wanted to make. It’s infused with their voice and humour, providing a commentary on sexuality, gender, food culture, racism and more, whilst the bodies of murdered men keep popping up around the small Tasmanian town of Deadloch.
The comic moments didn’t always work, with the jokes destroying some of the dramatic tension and plot momentum in the earlier episodes, but a better balance is found towards the end of the run. And the final episode, in which the murderer is revealed and several of the more pernicious townspeople get their comeuppance, is worth the wait.
Would we personally rather see McLennan and McCartney do more outright comedy? Yes, but Deadloch was a nice bridge (with echoes of The Bridge) between a popular detective genre and the kind of feminist/anti-racist comedy we saw in Get Krack!n.
The fact that TV seems to need such bridges, though, and doesn’t have the will, the guts, or the money to make sketch shows, topical satires, and many other types of comedy is more our gripe here. Who out there has got the impression that audiences don’t want to laugh? Who thinks we’re better off with comedians hosting cooking shows rather than doing comedy? And will today’s release of Mitch McTaggart’s new series of The Back Side of Television solve the problem, or just be more of the same?
Okay, so our expectations weren’t all that high for Gold Diggers. Australia’s proud history of proud historical sitcoms doesn’t quite begin and end with Bligh, but good luck topping the “big tits, small dicks” scene from The Olden Days. And both those examples are old enough to be historical comedies in their own right. Why doesn’t someone try to make a sitcom set in the hilarious 90s? But we digress.
And with good reason, because otherwise we’d have to engage with Gold Diggers, a sitcom that doesn’t exactly waste a mountain of potential but rarely comes close to living up to it either. So what’s the joke? We were hoping you knew.
At first it seems like the comedy premise here is that our heroines – Gert (Claire Lovering) and Marigold (Danielle Walker) Brewster – are party girls who have shown up at the goldfields circa 1853 looking for rich dudes to relocate them onto easy street. Only they seem pretty picky for seemingly desperate women, and they’re not interested in lowering their standards either. Good for them!
Not so good for the show though, as after a few scenes where things don’t work out, the rest of the episode mostly involves them wandering around being brash and in-your-face in between being puzzled as to why this approach doesn’t seem to be working.
You know what else isn’t working? An approach to comedy that’s roughly 80% “wouldn’t it be hilarious if people in the 1800s talked like they did today, well not how everyone talks today just comedy dickheads?” Going by this kind of sparkling dialogue, no it wouldn’t:
‘All right, sis, are you ready to do this?’
‘I’m not not ready.’
‘Fire up, bitch!’
‘Fire up, bitch!’
‘Vibe check?’
‘Honestly, vibe is pumpin’.’
We’re not going to throw this one entirely under the Cobb & Co coach just yet, because it’s obviously a first episode where they’re setting up a lot of stuff and some of the dynamics – Eddie Perfect as a burly bartender who can’t seem to get it through to our (possibly time-traveling because how else to explain their lack of basic knowledge about society?) leads that women can’t drink in public bars in 1853 for one – have potential.
Also, everybody around the Brewster sisters seems to find them annoying, which is a sign that the series creators have realised they’ve created a couple of annoying characters. All they have to do now is realise that annoying is not the same as funny.
Any way you slice it, this feels like a first episode that’s woefully underdone. If the Brewster’s are schemers after rich husbands, make it a sitcom about that! But we also get a bunch of hints that the sisters are on the run, which is fine – but if they’re here because they’re on the run and hiding out and trying to make a go of it, make it a sitcom about that, because that’s not the same as being gold diggers.
(hands up anyone else who gets the feeling that the creators came up with the “gold diggers” pun and then half way through writing the first episode they realised that gold diggers is an offensive stereotype they didn’t want to perpetuate and oh shit now they have to rework the whole premise even though the only joke they had is the premise)
In fact, this bends over backwards to make sure you realise the two leads are actually sticking it to the man – well, all men, in the form of the patriarchy, via an awful lot of dialogue about literally taking on the patriarchy and other cliche internet feminism 101 lines (don’t worry, even the other female characters think they’re full of shit).
This could all possibly be meant to be funny in a “yeah right, as if people 170 years ago talked like this” way except it just comes off as the writers wanting to make sure we realise that despite their dire plight and violent surroundings our heroines are in no way going to be taken advantage of or lose their agency or be threatened in any real way.
Which is exactly what you want in a comedy. Only, you know, done better. A lot better.
Gambling ads have been in the news recently, what with an exciting new proposal to ban them because they’re pure fucking evil.
“Gambling advertising and simulated gambling through video games is grooming children and young people to gamble and encourages riskier behaviour,” she said. “The torrent of advertising is inescapable. It is manipulating an impressionable and vulnerable audience to gamble online.”
So what did the advertising experts at the newly returned Gruen have to say about all this back in 2021?
Well, there’s a lot about how amazingly effective gambling ads are, a bit about how gambling works to get you addicted, and one line about how… hell, let’s go to the screenshots:
Protecting people! Yes!
Ohh, so close.
To be fair to these bloodless shills for an industry that is a malignant cancerous growth on society, they skate right up to the idea that there should be restrictions on gambling advertising, and then rapidly swerve back onto how gambling itself is a bad thing but you know, you’ve got to admire how they know how to really focus on the bad and bring that out and purify it until it’s utterly toxic… gambling that is, not advertising.
So you know, apart from the vibe of watching one group of war criminals admiring the activities of another group of war criminals, good job Gruen! You almost – but not quite – admitted advertising is making a serious social ill even worse.
(never fear, there’s next to no real threat of gambling ads being banned all together – as that article helpfully points out, “The federal government, which is not required to implement the committee’s recommendations, is expected to face significant pressure from the country’s biggest sporting codes and media companies not to adopt them.”)
There’s a lot to dislike about Gruen and we’ve gone on about it a lot over the years. Even just on the level of entertainment, it’s dull and lazy, full of hacky jokes from Wil Anderson – what’s that Wil? You smoke dope? Who knew! – and weirdly skewed segments that claim to be tackling the big issues through the lens of advertising but constantly seem to skirt any of the angles that might unsettle the vested interests seated around the table.
The flaw at the heart of the series from day one has been a massive one. It’s a show about advertising that’s only interested in showcasing the views of insiders. Advertising doesn’t exist solely in the coke-addled boardrooms and HR nightmare offices of advertising agencies: it goes out into the world and fucks up the lives of regular people. Good luck finding them on Gruen.
Every time one of the generic smugsters around the desk talks about the effectiveness of this ad or the impact of that ad, there should be a half dozen people behind them pointing out that advertising is when they hit mute on their televisions*, or start texting, or do literally anything else because advertising is a boring pointless intrusion on our lives at best and outright theft of our most valuable commodity – our time – at worse.
Ads are shit, and so is Gruen.
.
*at a guess, the real reason why nobody on Gruen is going to say “ban gambling ads” – aside from the sheer insanity of expecting a bunch of advertising executives to ever suggest there should be even the tiniest of limitations on their boundless reach – is because gambling ads are pretty much the only thing propping up large expanses of free-to-air television. For some bizarre reason, Gruen is a show lazer-focused on television ads despite the fact that nobody under 50 seems to still be watching television with any kind of regularity… unless it’s sport. Remind us again: who advertises during sport?
For comedy to be funny it needs to be believable and it’s hard to find anything much believable or funny in the new locally made Catherine Tate comedy Queen of Oz.
Princess Georgiana (Catherine Tate) is the gaff-prone daughter of the current British monarch. Having screwed up one time too many, by vomiting on a schoolgirl presenting her with a model of Buckingham Palace, her family send her to Australia, where she will found and lead a local monarchy.
Wait, what? We know this is a work of fiction, and watching it involves some suspension of disbelief, but Queen of Oz is expecting us to buy that the Australian government agrees to let our current (foreign) monarch step aside in favour of their wayward daughter, thus establishing an Australian monarchy, rather than, you know, becoming a republic? That’s the kind of plot you write if you still think Britain’s former colonies just accept that kind of thing. Like it’s the 1940s when the abdicated Edward VIII got packed off to be Governor of Bermuda because he had Nazi sympathies and the British wanted him out of Europe.
But let’s be generous to Queen of Oz, set all that improbability aside, and accept that this is plausible. It’d be really funny to have a drug-taking, smoking, drinking, shagging mess-up as monarch of Australia, right? Ummm…
Look, let’s just say the scripts aren’t great. Or, possibly more to the point, the show is dominated by Queen Georgiana and Catherine Tate plays her as a snooty, bitchy bin fire turned up to 11, and if you don’t find that character and her performance funny and interesting then you’re out of luck as pretty much no other character gets a look in.
And this is a shame, as Queen of Oz has a solid supporting cast of very able performers, including Jenna Owen (The Feed) as the Queen’s PR/social media whiz kid Zoe, Marc Collins (Mystery Road) as the Queen’s bodyguard Marc, Robert Coleby (Patrol Boat) as the Queen’s private secretary Bernard, William McKenna (The Messenger) as the Queen’s assistant Matthew, Rachel Gordon (Blue Heelers) as Prime Minister Rebecca Stewart, lady-in-waiting Anabel (Niky Wardley) and David Roberts (Please Like Me) as media mogul Richard Steele. Yet, apart from the odd scene, we get almost no sense of who these characters are. And not one of them ever gets to drive a plot or create laughs.
Even in the second episode, where Georgiana tries to woo media mogul Richard in the hope that his outlets won’t lead with her latest blunder every day, the focus is kept very much on Georgiana. Which is an error, as great sitcoms which have centred on nasty or blundering characters, like Fawlty Towers and Blackadder, always got major laughs from the supporting cast. And amongst the above-mentioned supporting cast, there are several potential Sybil Fawlty-esque thorns in Georgiana’s side (e.g., media mogul Richard, republican Prime Minister Stewart), and several Baldrick-esque idiot off-siders (e.g., nervy assistant Matthew, lady-in-waiting Anabel).
But why make a well-rounded ensemble sitcom when you have major international star Catherine Tate? Having her dominate every scene of Queen of Oz with her screeching wreck of a central character will be great. It worked brilliantly for Chris Lilley.
You have to wonder whether the show’s funders, which includes the likes of Screen NSW, are proud of Queen of Oz – the ABC haven’t exactly been promoting it – especially when you read this little nugget, hidden away on the show’s Wikipedia page:
Catherine Tate first began developing the idea for the sitcom in 2017, after being approached by Canadian producer Borga Dorter. Initially, it was supposed to be set in Canada and was unsuccessfully pitched to local broadcasters as Queen of Canada.
Canada may have exported most of its great comedy talents (Mike Myers, Dan Aykroyd) but they made the right call here.
You know what they say – you cannot kill what does not live. And so trying to shovel some dirt over The Weekly once again proves to be utterly pointless, because across 19 episodes the whole thing showed about as much life as your average Dodo and yet it’ll somehow be back again next year like a real-life Walking Dead spin-off. Shit.
If we had to nail down what’s wrong with The Weekly, it’d probably involve using actual nails because the show has tried so many different approaches over the years and they’ve all been shithouse. The one common factor has been Charlie Pickering, but surely we can’t blame it all on him… can we?
Yes, he is utterly useless whether he’s playing at being a host, a sketch performer, an interviewer or just a method to extract oxygen from the air and replace it with carbon dioxide. He’s a newsreader, but shit. And yet, all he has to do is read some jokes and occasionally mimic a human being: can’t the rest of the show get by without him?
Unfortunately, that would require there to be a “rest of the show”. The Weekly with Charlie Pickering is barely a television show, and we’re living in an era where having a bunch of smug tools sit behind a big desk agreeing with each other is prime time viewing (on an unrelated note, Gruen is back this week). This is like that, but with only one person at the desk he’s forced to agree with himself, which going by Pickering’s vibe shouldn’t be a problem at all.
But seriously: how crap is Pickering? So crap that pretty much the closest thing the show has to a running joke is that everyone else treats him like trash – Rhys Nicholson, that scary lady who hosts 730, Pickering himself canceling that segment where he canceled stuff.
“Yeah, we know, he sucks” is the underlying message. “But hey, comedy!” Only there is no comedy. The only satisfaction comes from the blunt stating of obvious facts: Pickering ain’t great.
And the rest of the show has to operate on his level. It’s hard to imagine just how bad the jokes are on The Weekly unless you’ve watched it, and you shouldn’t watch it. This week they made a joke about a big umbrella, because big umbrellas are something people at the golf-
-and here’s another problem: The Weekly‘s slogan is something like “we watch the news so you don’t have to”, which logically leads to the idea that we’ll be getting a run down of the important issues of the week. This week’s lead story: a golf tour is merging with another golf tour. Say what?
In fact, pretty much all the stories covered – with the exception of Kochie’s retirement, used largely to (once again) make fun of Sunrise, and the latest rate rise from the RBA, used largely to (once again) make fun of A Current Affair – were international. New York smoke haze, Trump, UK politics… you know, the things already covered a hundred times better online and overseas.
Then again, it’s not like The Weekly‘s audience actually go online or know about overseas comedy.
But in a week when the big, real, actual, important local news was about sexual harassment (at best) at the nation’s capital, first with the LNP going Labor for some scandal that was totally definitely going to take down a minister before oh shit, one of the LNP senators was being accused of actually doing bad shit, how did it all go so terribly wrong, The Weekly said: nothing.
Even if you think The Weekly is perfectly fine comedy-wise (if you actually do think this, seek professional help), this should be a sackable offense. How can you pretend to be a news satire program when the biggest news story of the week – a local story, a serious story, a story that took place days before your deadline – gets no coverage while a fucking golf tournament for millionaires gets the lead slot?
By now we’ve all heard the news about even more cuts at the ABC. Didn’t we vote in a Labor government to stop this happening?
ABC has announced departmental restructures of its new Content division, spanning Scripted, Entertainment, Factual, Indigenous, Arts and Childrens across television, radio and online from July 1st.
The Content division is headed by recently-appointed Chief Content Officer Chris Oliver-Taylor, who sits separately from the News division headed by Justin Stevens.
As part of the digital transformation changes, a number of ABC executives in commissioning and production will be made redundant. Up to 120 jobs are expected to go across the broadcaster today, including in News.
Of course, “meeting changing audiences and the reality of rising costs” actually means “a great excuse for management to do whatever the fuck they like while claiming they were forced into it”. Sucks to be Andrew Probyn right now, guess a decade spent getting onside with the LNP and all they stand for was for naught.
What we’re interested in a fuckload more than writing up yet another Vale for The Weekly because that show is shit on a molecular level is how all these changes will affect the ABC’s comedy output. Well, that and getting big laughs out of lines like these:
“Entertainment, led as a separate department by Nick Hayden, will continue to serve our broad audience, delivering hits such as The Weekly, Gruen and Hard Quiz and remains a critical audience driver to the ABC.
But why stop there with the hits from the Entertainment department? What about Win the Week? No love for Question Everything? Tomorrow Tonight was a series that got two seasons! We’re already at 50% duds and that’s just off the top of our heads.
More importantly, who exactly is being driven – rather than being parked there already displaying their aged pension stickers – to the ABC to watch these turds? Gruen is almost old enough to vote; Hard Quiz is a quiz show which has succeeded largely because the ABC – despite usually doing well out of quiz shows for decades – decided not to do any quiz shows for a few years because who needs viewers when you have (goes through Rolodex for 2012)… Marieke Hardy?
And then there’s The Weekly. Let’s not get bogged down here – we still have to write that Vale eventually – but for those looking for a very specific example of why the ABC is a pale imitation of its former glory, look no further. Once, the ABC aired actual satire: Shaun Micallef, John Clarke and Brian Dawe, those decent second season episodes of The Hollowmen, very tiny snippets of The Glasshouse, and on and on – not all of it was any good (hello BackBurner) but it was there, it had a point of view, and it was trying.
The Weekly isn’t even the ghostly remains of a decent satirical program. It’s a news recap delivered in an annoying voice where having the host pull an incredulous face every 90 seconds counts as comedy. Every single joke on The Weekly is the laziest possible joke they could make, every single interview is a pointless puff piece, every single guest is funnier literally everywhere else, and everything else about the show is somehow even worse.
It’s a disgrace, only not in the fun “Ban this Sick Filth” way. Either it goes, or… well, there’s not really anything else left to threaten audiences with, is there?
Apart from axing management of course, but we’ve already established the ABC isn’t about giving viewers what they want.
Once again we return to what seems to be increasingly familiar territory: new Australian series that you’d think would be comedies, but are not. And not in the “because they’re not funny, geddit?” sense either. The Betoota Advocate Presents is a perfectly well made and successful program that just… isn’t really trying to be all that funny.
Hosted by those two guys who’re the public face of the Betoota media empire – they even make a joke about peddling merch – with new episodes weekly on Paramount+, episode one of their big step into the world of television is basically just a snarky documentary looking at the rise and fall of the Hillsong Church. Facts? Loads of them. Jokes? Well… maybe a couple here and there.
They’ve clearly put in the effort to make a decent documentary. There’s plenty of interviews and archival footage, animated inserts to fill in the gaps (they’re often smirk-worthy) and a script that covers all the bases in an informative and occasionally quippy fashion. It’s just not a comedy program – it’s a recap.
Which is a little surprising. Their website is largely comedy-focused (at least, when it’s not secretly advertising stuff). Australia hasn’t had a shortage of comedy takes on true stories and issues over the years either – even that version of Drunk History 10 tried wasn’t all bad. Couldn’t they call up John Safran for some tips? Have we all forgotten True Story with Hamish & Andy?
We weren’t expecting the second coming of Brass Eye or anything, but we did hold out hope that this would contain more comedy than just a few snarky comments here and there and a loose attitude that’s happy to play up the quirky side of the topic.
Again, and clearly we can’t say this often enough because this is still a show worth checking out if you’re interested in the subject matter, this is a perfectly decent slice of documentary programming. Even better, there’s just enough attitude to make it more than just a retrospective news report that goes on a little too long. It’s just not a comedy.
At a guess, we’d assume that the Betoota crew realised that four solidly funny mockumentary takes on big issues was more work than they wanted to put in (or required more talent than they had on hand). Comedy, let’s not forget, is hard work: recapping the recent past in an entertaining way is a lower bar to clear.
Also, the final episode of The Betoota Advocate Presents – there’ll be four in all – is supposedly about the Fine Cotton affair. Those interested in some kind of comedy compare & contrast might want to revisit this beforehand:
Ok, so Utopia is back for a record-breaking (not really – ed) fifth season. It’s been almost a decade since season one first aired – surely after a tumultuous decade in politics this particular satire has morphed into something all but unrecognisable?
Yeah, nah, it’s business as usual once again. You can’t really fault Working Dog for having an “if it ain’t broke” attitude to Utopia – it’s a well-oiled comedy machine, and they’ve said elsewhere that once they realised they could say everything they wanted to say with the format, the urge to move onto something new fizzled out. But do they still have anything worth saying on the subject of infrastructure planning?
That depends: did they ever? Utopia is a window back in time to a period where the so-called smart thinking was that both sides of politics were basically the same – self-promoters and media obsessives who had no ideological goals beyond clinging to power. Let’s think back over the last five years or so: does that really seem like an accurate description of the halls of power to you?
All the political schemes in Utopia are lightweight comedy boondoggles. At worst, there’s some generic pork barrelling going on; nobody’s taking aim at Robodebt here. It’s political satire for people who see themselves as being above politics, people who complain about where “their tax dollars are going” because the idea that poor and disadvantaged people might possibly need help is fine so long as it doesn’t stop the government from funneling cash into private schools and negative gearing.
Fortunately, going by the first episode back the big appeal this season is going to be watching Working Dog take on pressing issues like “what’s the deal with these new refrigerators?” and “why can’t I make jokes around the office like I used to?”. Both valid questions for the over-60s, and it’s not like the ABC audience is going to snap back “Ok boomer”.
(imagine a series identical to Utopia, but from the perspective of a): Jim and Rhonda, the game-playing go-getters just trying to get the good news out there, or b): any one of the constantly perplexed assistants and offsiders, lumbered with a weirdly intransigent boss who Just Doesn’t Get It)
But the main plot of week one – what’s the deal with these never ending roadworks – doesn’t seem to serve up the kind of pithy conclusion we used to see with Utopia. The comedy used to come from Rob Sitch’s Tony pointing out that what seems to be a flaw in the system is actually a feature. There’s always someone who profits from things being how they are, and they’re usually hard at work to keep it that way. (you’re talking about Working Dog, right? – ed)
The point of Tony’s quest this episode was more to underline the way that spin has soaked down to the roots of any big government activity or project. Everyone he met recited the same talking points and then going to the media only forced the organisation to double down on those talking points. Being one big circle – or ring road, if you like – was the point; it just wasn’t quite as satisfying as that classic scene where Tony pointed out to a bunch of defense chiefs that the whole point of our defense policy is to defend ourselves from our biggest trading partner.
Hey, they can’t all be winners. Having a reliable, competent, well-made sitcom back on our screens is cause for celebration even if things have been a little repetitious since at least season three. If there’s anything to complain about, it’s that Working Dog have proven themselves to be masters of reinvention over the decades. Having them stick with Utopia for so long just makes us sad thinking about the two or three other brilliant sitcoms we might have had from them instead.
There was only ever one of two ways Deadloch could go. One way had us excited; the other… yeah, not so much. So what exactly have Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan served up with their big budget Amazon murder mystery series? And why aren’t we super excited about what’s to come?
Behind door number one, Deadloch was going to be a all-in parody of prestige noir, that over-exposed genre that’s increasingly come to dominate television around the world. You know what we mean: there’s a murder in a very scenic small town (cold location preferable), turns out it’s just the tip of the mysterious iceberg, our heroic detective and a sidekick (so they have someone to talk to) investigate while also struggling with personal issues and meanwhile the body count keeps rising.
Behind door number two, Deadloch was going to be… well, basically just another prestige noir mystery, only with comedy characters. To be fair, Amazon isn’t going to sink big money into eight hour-long episodes that were taking the piss out of a genre that dominates drama the world over, whatever the Kates’ comedy credentials. And so it has proven to be.
There are a few fresh angles. For one, it’s extremely LGBTIQ+. One detective is gay, the other is basically an ocker caricature but a woman – we’re talking Ted Bullpit, lady cop, so strap yourselves in. Pretty much the only male character who isn’t a fuckwit is played by Tom Ballard, so at a guess he’s gay too. Meanwhile, all the murder victims are (extremely) straight white males, as in one’s a rootrat footy coach, another’s his dipshit brother and a third (possible) victim is named Rod Dixon, though this (them being male, not the ex-Mayor being named Rod) does prove essential to the plot.
Considering the sexism and barely concealed misogyny that often runs through a genre based largely on young women being found dead and then “avenged” by middle aged men, there’s definitely room for a new take here.
Meanwhile, the welcome to country at the start of the local cultural festival turns out to be an acknowledgement of country, as the speaker reminds everyone that the entire town of Deadloch isn’t exactly “welcome” – after all, a small town cultural festival is no world’s oldest culture. Again, it’s good to see a local production that’s taking place (culturally at least) in 21st century Australia.
And when it’s trying to be a straight (sorry) murder mystery it often works fairly well. The small Tasmanian town where it’s set looks good and there’s plenty of subplots: the first body is found right before a big cultural festival so of course the Mayor wants it brushed over, there’s a possible drug link and loads of dark secrets, after the first episode the media starts shit-stirring and the town itself is clearly divided between the stale pale male old guard and the lesbian choir singing “I Touch Myself”. There’s a solid lead in senior sergeant Dulcie Collins (Kate Box), and not every single character is a complete fuckwit.
That last one’s important to stress because it turns out that quite a few characters are fuckwits. Which is a bit of a problem. Consider an episode of Wallander, only every second character Wallander meets is played by Hale & Pace bunging on an act: welcome to Deadloch.
While in theory it’s certainly possible to imagine a wide range of comedy characters living in a small town – and Deadloch does feature one sleazy mansplaining type and one overeager newbie, so there is some variety – the Kates seem to have decided to narrow much of the population of Deadloch down to “painful cartoon Aussie cliche”.
When blow-in detective Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami) and pretty much everyone directly connected to the first murder victim has seemingly staggered out of a Barry McKenzie revival, you’d better like your comedy broader than a bush pig’s behind or something.
Redcliffe is in fact so much of an annoying hammy abrasive cliche that you’d be forgiven for thinking she’s secretly a brilliant detective bunging on an act to get those around her to let down their guard. You’d be wrong.
In contrast, Collins is super straight-laced and serious. Obviously what we have here is the beginning of a beautiful double act where they start out at odds with each other but eventually each wears the other down and we get a true meeting of the minds. That’s great for solving a string of murders; comedy wise we’re not exactly dealing with French & Saunders here.
The big problem is that tonally Deadloch is way all over the place. The soundtrack is playing it serious and the visuals are straight out of the prestige playbook, but it also has a scene where the local footy team kick footies at the hearse carrying their dead coach as a salute. Some characters seem like plausible people (that’d be the local teens); most of the rest are stock comedy figures of the “dickhead” variety (some bogan, some hippie). It’s harsh, but someone’s got to say it: Rosehaven featured more nuanced characters.
To get technical for a moment, the reason why prestige noir mysteries don’t usually take place in a town full of broad comedy stereotypes is that those stereotypes distract from the mystery – you know, the thing that is the point of a prestige noir mystery. The supporting characters in these shows are there almost entirely to impart information: anything beyond the barest characterisation – which is also there to impart information (“he seems shifty, bet he’s lying”) – is slowing things down. So having the comedy come from these dipshits messes with the mystery side of things; stop fucking around and do your job.
Looked at another way, turns out there’s a good reason why almost every single long running murder mystery franchise features a quirky, memorable lead surround by bland nobodies. Deadloch instead has a bland nobody as its lead, which may seem harsh when she’s the best thing in the series but when your main character trait is “going by the book” that’s the hand you’ve been dealt.
At the end of the day – or just at the end of the first three episodes; maybe by episode five everyone’ll be piling out of clown cars or something – Deadloch isn’t really a comedy. It’s a serious murder mystery that has comedy characters scattered throughout. If you’re looking for laughs first and foremost, this isn’t what you’re looking for.
And not just because a lot of the time it’s just not that funny.
