When Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney set out to make a darkly funny new murder mystery series, they never anticipated police would actually be called to their set to investigate a suspicious body.
Yet that's exactly what happened.
The beloved Australian comedy duo is the creative force behind shows such as The Katering Show and Get Krack!n, and their new Prime Video series Deadloch is very much a high-comedy spin on the crime genre. A series that also happens to open with the discovery of a dead body on the beach of a small Tasmanian town.
Speaking to Mamamia, 'The Kates' (as they have become known over the years to their fans) confessed they had a run-in with the law while filming the series. Which, if you've already begun watching the show, doesn't feel like a scenario totally out of reach for the town of Deadloch and its assortment of funny characters.
"We opened the show with a dead body and in order to shoot that scene we used a combination of a real person and also a model of a man," explained McLennan. "And this model of the man was what the makeup department and special effects teams were working with. So Kate Anderson, who did our special effects makeup, had this body in the back of her car one day and she went to the supermarket. Then someone saw the dead body in the back of the car and rang the police.
"So there was a whole deescalation situation that happened in a Woolworths carpark over it," she concluded.
Watch the trailer for Deadloch on Prime Video. Post continues below.
Following the appearance of a dead body in Deadloch, which unlike other small fictional Australian towns has very little going on in the crime stakes (here's looking at you, Blue Heelers and Mt Thomas) senior sergeant Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) is pulled into the investigative fray.
She is also forced to team up with senior investigator Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami), who has been brought in from Darwin to oversee the case and whose loud, outside-the-rule-book way of thinking immediately clashes with Dulcie's more calm and professional approach.
But as Deadloch prepares to launch its annual arts, food, and culture event – the Winter Feastival – Dulcie, Eddie and junior constable Abby (Nina Oyama) have to join forces in an odd-couple style investigation to solve the murder.
Crime shows notoriously follow a very specific formula, from who the victim is, what the protagonist's motivation happens to be, and who gets to be involved in the narrative. With Deadloch, The Kates took all these tropes and rules and promptly threw them out the window.
“This was a very early mandate of ours,” said McCartney. “What you usually see in other crime shows is that they start off with a young, naked and dead beautiful woman, but there's 'no sexy murder' in this show. So we flipped it around to make the victim a man.”
“We were also aware that the crime genre, in general, does tend to do a disservice to marginalised communities and entities. So we wanted to actually let them all talk in this show and give a voice to the people who would usually be portrayed as victims within these types of shows.
“We were far more interested in their stories,” agreed McLennan. “As we were making the show there was a real tightrope that we had to walk. We obviously come from a comedy background, but we also wanted this story to be thrilling. We wanted the audience to follow the twists and turns in the story and feel genuinely invested in it. So we had to pay just as much attention to the crime story as we did to the comedy.
“So we were constantly asking ourselves, is this too funny? Is it too serious? Do we need to dial it back? Or can we afford to put a bit of levity in here?
“We would always ask ourselves what is the 'Deadloch version' of these well-known crime show tropes?"
Deadloch features an impressive ensemble cast that includes Tom Ballard, Alicia Gardiner, Susie Youssef, Pamela Rabe, Kris McQuade, Duncan Fellows, Harvey Zielinski, Shaun Martindale, Katie Robertson, Nick Simpson-Deeks, Mia Morrissey, Leonie Whyman, Mick Davies, Holly Austin, Kartanya Maynard, and Naarah.
When creating these characters McLennan and McCartney filled the town of Deadloch with a series of characters so well-rounded and entertaining it feels like any of them could run away with their own spin-off series. But they also confirmed that once filming began, their chosen cast carefully breathed new life into the characters they had created on the page.
“We didn't necessarily write any of these roles specifically for any actors, but from very early on as we were writing the show we started to think about who would be really good for each part,” said McCartney. “And in the past, we’d had a really great experience making shows like Get Krack!n, and we wanted to do that again. So we’d ask ourselves, who is incredibly talented, and who's a good egg?
“Once we'd cast the actors, they were all so on board with their characters,” agreed McLennan. “Before we started shooting, we had a conversation with every actor about their characters and everyone just brought so much thought, detail, and nuance to their roles. So with the characters, even though they were fully formed when we started on the show, they all just got so much deeper. All thanks to what the actors bought to it."
Deadloch is a series that brilliantly breaks every rule that crime shows have expected us to follow, while also leaning into the most compelling parts of this genre and adding a unique comedy spin.
One of the best new shows you'll watch this year.
The first three episodes of Deadloch are now available to view exclusively on Prime Video, with new episodes available each Friday, leading up to the season finale on Friday, July 7.
Watch: Prime Video’s Deadloch trailer.
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Feature Image: Prime Video.
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