Australian comedy duo Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney have gone behind the camera for their new “feminist noir crime comedy” series Deadloch on streaming.
The eight-part series is a funny murder mystery set in a small Tasmanian town and it arrives on Amazon’s Prime Video today.
The titular Tasmanian town, a once sleepy seaside hamlet, is left reeling when a local man turns up dead on the beach.
Two female detectives are thrown together to solve the case: Fastidious local senior sergeant Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) and a rough-as-guts blow-in from Darwin, senior investigator Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami) along with their overeager junior constable Abby (Nina Oyama).
As Deadloch prepares to launch the annual arts, food, and culture event—Winter Feastival—the trio have to put their differences aside and work together to find the killer.
Queer talent among Deadloch’s ensemble cast
The new show has a big ensemble cast, including queer stars Kate Box, Nina Oyama and Tom Ballard, alongside Wentworth‘s Pamela Rabe and Rosehaven‘s Susie Youssef and Kris McQuade.
The two Kates – Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney – are known for the food parody series The Katering Show in 2015 and then the breakfast television satire series Get Krack!n.
The pair told ABC News Breakfast the new project had its roots in late night breastfeeding sessions in front of the TV watching the “darkest possible” noir crime drama shows.
“We started writing this about eight years ago when we had very, very young children,” McCartney explained.
“For anyone who’s breastfed, there’s a 3:00am feed where you’re just like, do I exist? Does the world know I’m here?
“To kind of quash any kind of existential crisis we were having, we started watching TV. We both started watching crime dramas independently of each other.”
McCartney would recommend Broadchurch to McLennan, who assumed the gritty drama was a comedy because Olivia Colman was in it.
On a later trip to Tasmania, where Deadloch would ultimately film, the duo wrote the pilot for the project “marrying comedy and drama”.
Funny, but with a genuinely engage whodunnit
Kate McClennan said they initially thought the series should be much more of a parody.
“Then we got ambitious and thought, no, let’s take the time and have the space,” she told the ABC.
“We wanted to have these big epic shots. Tasmania looks incredible in this series. But if we had hour-long episodes, the crime story has to be genuinely engaging and thrilling and gripping.
“So we’ve worked incredibly hard to write something that if you love watching crime thrillers, this is still something you can watch and go, OK, I’m invested in this but also it’s funny.”
Asked if they missed being on camera, both Kates agreed, “not at all”.
“We cast ourselves in a cameo and we shot that cameo. And then watched it in the edit and we were so bad that we cut it and recast ourselves,” McLennan laughed.
Deadloch is streaming on Prime Video.
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We have our own mcLENNAN & mcCARTNEY Australia, we should be very proud! Loved both their previous series ! Just as soon as I get thru 3RD season of Love Victor. Deadloch just has to be immediate very next Must See. Who expected to see Mr. T. Ballard delivering punchlines, he didn’t write ✍ himself? No doubt it is unmissable telly, for next short while. Most welcomed unexpected treat to turn up after subscribing to the Prime network, in esteemed company, amongst all the 1ST class UK Classic Comedies on there.
Actually Mr. T. Ballard may well have contributed to the content on Deadloch. I was Not being rude there, just expressing some anticipating excitement, to catch up with in the very near future!