Deadloch brings a queer detective and hilarious twist to Broadchurch’s formula

09.08.2023 - 18:39 / polygon.com

On a desolate beachfront, two drunk First Nation teens stumble upon a naked corpse; in a meticulously organized house full of labeled Mason jars and Post-it notes, two women attempt to have sex while their dog watches, confused and upset; outside of the house, there are four garbage cans with ACAB painted on them. These are the scenes that open Deadloch, a new Australian murder mystery black comedy created by Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan. The Amazon Prime series wastes no time establishing a world whose queerness, murder, and incompetent law enforcement underpin Senior Sgt. Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) and her team’s attempts to maintain order in Deadloch while unmasking a misandrist murderer.

Small-Town Murder Mysteries™ have become shorthand for prestige dramatic vehicles that showcase serious actors: True Detective, Fargo, Sharp Objects, Top of the Lake, and Mare of Easttown all boast impressively expensive cast lists and saw their fair share of awards love. It’s not difficult to track the genre’s constructs: emotionally damaged detectives who struggle to work together, an idyllic community that harbors a dark and damaging secret, a serial killer always one step ahead of the law. These tropes have roots in Nordic Noir and were popularized by the breakout British series Broadchurch, which deeply influenced the Kates during Deadloch’s development. For eight years, they refined their show (whose working title was aptly “Funny Broadchurch”) into a gut-busting, politically sharp takedown of a genre full of unchallenged misogyny, heteronormativity, and copaganda.

Located under the Land Down Under, the sleepy Tasmanian town of Deadloch shares only superficial similarities to its counterparts. The town itself is rapidly gentrifying, the recent influx of queer couples directly challenging the locals’ regressive (read: sexist and homophobic) views. The one thing everyone agrees on: Cops are useless. Unlike the righteously flawed paragons of morality and justice associated with the genre, Deadloch police languidly dole out parking tickets and coax seals off bridges. And when fitness bro Trent Latham’s (Barry Wheeler) body washes ashore, the task of determining what happened is thrust upon people typically victimized within these narratives: type-A lesbian Dulcie, naive true-crime junkie Abby (Nina Oyama), Gay and Tired delegator Sven (Tom Ballard), and crass, out-of-town female detective Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami). As tongueless bodies pile up and lies are exposed, only Dulcie and her ill-equipped team of outsiders can protect the men of the town from an unspeakable demise.

Each of the eight episodes is a perfectly concocted alchemy of dramatic intrigue, engrossing character interactions, and