Tim Goodman / Bastard Machine

Tim Goodman / Bastard Machine

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Tim Goodman / Bastard Machine
Tim Goodman / Bastard Machine
"Deadloch."

"Deadloch."

The Australian-set series from Amazon gets the Two Episode Test.

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Tim Goodman
Oct 24, 2023
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Tim Goodman / Bastard Machine
Tim Goodman / Bastard Machine
"Deadloch."
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It doesn’t take long before you know that “Deadloch” is going to be more of a comedy than a murder mystery (which is, later, proven wrong, by the way) because it leans so heavily into the destruction of tropes and gleefully flips the testosterone-heavy tone of so many Australian dramas by setting up a lesbian influx at a coastal Tasmanian town that lets series creators and writers Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney (they are known as “the Kates” but don’t sleep on the allure of the Beatles link) lean into their own audacious, uproariously nasty and base set of non-stop riffing.

This is a series where two young women go out drinking and smoking on the beach and one accidentally trips over a dead, nude male corpse and accidentally “lights his dick on fire” (which we see) while the other throws up on the guy’s head. Later “Deadloch” sends up television’s love of blustery, aggro-bossy male detectives who come into a podunk town and take over the investigation, stepping all over the local officers in the process. Only this time outsider Det. Eddie Redcliffe is actually a woman so hilariously over the top you sense the delight McLennan and McCartney and the other female writers no doubt experienced knowing that half of what Eddie says probably can’t be printed here.

Being a paid subscriber is more fun because you get to finish articles like this. Some are really long and fascinating. Some are short and plucky. Others ramble, but in a joyful-reading-experience kind of way. Hell, the archive is full of examples, which is a way to say that if you can afford $6 a month or the better value of $50 for a year, then you’ll have countless helpful posts to read about what TV or movies you should watch or how to live a happy life.

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