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Long before season one aired, the Kates – creators, writers and spirit guides Kate McCartney (the tall one) and Kate McLennan (“the one with the teeth”, as her Instagram profile has it) – knew that if they got to make a second season of their genre-bending comedy crime procedural Deadloch it would be set in the Top End rather than Tasmania.
“When we were writing the season one pilot we had scenes in the Northern Territory, where we met Eddie [Madeleine Sami’s detective Eddie Redcliffe] before Eddie came to Deadloch,” explains McLennan.
Those scenes didn’t make it to air because “it was just a completely different story with a whole different set of rules that wasn’t setting up the world we needed to set up in the first season,” says McCartney.
Adds McLennan: “And so we gave ourselves permission to think that if we did a second series, we’d do Eddie’s backstory, we’d look at that world, and we’d embed ourselves in the Top End.”
When I visit the set in September 2024, the Kates are holed up at a table in a pub in Batchelor, a small town about 100 kilometres from Darwin, frantically tweaking dialogue for the scenes about to be shot.
While I get to chat with the key cast and some of the production team, the creators are way too busy fine-tuning to say more than a quick hello before burying their heads in their screens again. Interviews will have to wait – almost 18 months, in fact – until the series is finally ready to make its way into the world.
McLennan and McCartney (or the McBeatles, as I like to think of them) have been working together for about 16 years. Accounts of how they met vary, from a DM on Twitter to being co-workers on an animation series, to one of them spilling a drink on the other at an industry event. But they are so in sync now that frequently one of them starts a sentence and the other finishes it.
I ask why it has taken so long for season two to emerge (season one aired in June 2023), and they tag-team the answer.
“We wanted to spend a bit of time in the edit, to make sure we were packing the punch we needed,” says McLennan.
“... saying the things we wanted to say,” continues McCartney. “Season one was trying to give a voice to the people who are often the victims in these [crime] shows. But this time round, we were focused a bit more on another aspect of the genre, and sort of destabilising that…”
“... and looking at the role of the justice system,” says McLennan, “taking the crime genre and looking at the idea of…”
“...what does justice look like…”
“...and who’s being protected, who’s allowed safety. And it was knowing that we probably wouldn’t do another season, so we were, ‘Well, let’s just throw everything we have at this, as if it’s the last chance we get to kind of say anything in this realm’.”
In case you’ve lost track, that last bit was McLennan. I’m pretty sure.
At any rate, the new season sees Eddie back on home turf trying to uncover the truth about the death of her former police partner, Bushy. Her new partner, former and once-again detective Dulcie Collins (Kate Box), has gone with her, as has Dulcie’s partner Cath (Alicia Gardiner).
Barely have they arrived before parts of a body start turning up in the croc-infested river. They belong to a local croc tourism operator, and his family want justice, or revenge.
Before too long – and by the kind of plot contrivance only a show like Deadloch would be permitted – Abby Matsuda (Nina Oyama) has joined the investigation, now as a forensics officer. And local journalist Leo Lee (Jean Tong), tired of writing sensationalist stories about rogue crocs, somehow inveigles their way onto the team, merely by silently popping up with helpful information when most needed.
It’s funny, chaotic, and sweary as all hell. But goodness, there’s some stuff going on in Deadloch. Environmental exploitation, chauvinism, gender and sexual fluidity, police corruption, the patriarchy, racism. There’s barely a big issue this show doesn’t poke a very pointed stick at.
“That’s the beauty of what the Kates do,” says Box. “They send you on this great ride, they give you lots of shits and giggles, and then they whack you with something deeply moving and incredibly important.”
Sami echoes that. “What I love about the Kates and how they write this show is that they wrap up some delicious politics inside of this funny, sweary show. I hope the audience is bursting at the sides, and I hope their brains are fizzing, and their hearts are open to some of the stuff that is in there as well.”
The relationship between Eddie and Dulcie is at the heart of everything, and it’s all about dualities. Dulcie is the straight-edged, rule- and procedure-focused half of the duo; Eddie is much more focused on getting answers, no matter how chaotic and cavalier her approach.
Dulcie is an inner-city cop from Sydney – a fish out of water in Tasmania in season one, and battling heat rashes and infections and terrified of being bitten and burnt in season two. Eddie, who landed down south like an explosion, suddenly seems to make a lot more sense in the context of the Top End.
In truth, it’s Box who is far more at ease in the north, having spent part of her childhood in Darwin and having relocated there in the past year with her own kids. “There’s something about the heat that I’m drawn to,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t get rub-rub.”
Rub-rub?
“You know, when your thighs rub together as you’re walking, and you get itchy under your bra. And then the midges come out. You’re lathered in every kind of cream.”
Sami, meanwhile, “being from rainy little New Zealand”, is far more comfortable in a cooler clime.
Playing Eddie was demanding in lots of ways. “She is very high energy, so it takes a little second to get match fit and into the character zone,” says Sami.
Psychologically and emotionally, there’s plenty going on with Eddie. “She has pushed a lot of her feelings down, and in this season, because she’s back in her hometown, a lot of that comes to the surface. So it was really a draining, draining, draining experience because you’re just channelling and pulling out a lot of this emotion, and it’s physically challenging, and then to top it all off, you’re just in this insane heat that I’d never experienced before.”
The swearing, at least, she was ready for.
“I come from an Irish Catholic woman, with six sisters and one brother, and they’ve all got mouths like truck drivers,” she says. “My version of Eddie is a touch of all my aunties. The Kates love to be inventive with curse words, and I f---ing love them for that.”
This being the Territory – where a popular sticker aimed at the tourist market urges “CU in the NT” – the cussing load is spread around in season two. “My guess is there’s actually fewer c---s in season two from my character, but maybe more from the entire cast,” Sami says. “I would love a nerdy fan of the show to do a c--- count from season one to season two.
“C--- count,” she adds, laughing at the phrase she has just coined. “It has to be done.”
Season two packs a lot into its six episodes. Is there more to come from the Deadloch team, or is this it?
“There’s a big well of ideas as to where it could go next, and what it could become,” says Box, who adds that she would absolutely relish the chance to do more. “I could play Dulcie for an eternity, I love her so much. But mostly I love her because of who she stands next to. Dulcie is so magnificent because she’s standing next to Eddie.”
Sami is up for more Deadloch, too.
“I would love to play Eddie forever,” she says. “She’s such a complex character, with so much shit to work out. And when you’ve got to the end of season two, there’s still so much to work out.”
Ultimately, though, it will be up to the Kates. So, what do you think – is there more Deadloch to come?
“We very much approached it like this is going to be the last season, so throw everything at the wall,” says McLennan. “We feel like we’ve done a lot with the genre, and I think we’re both pretty keen to do some other things next.”
“Never say never,” adds McCartney. “But at the moment…”
The first two episodes of Deadloch (season two) are on Amazon Prime Video from March 20, with new episodes weekly until April 17.
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