From the brilliant, goofy minds behind the hilarious Get Krackin’ and The Katering Show, Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan, comes an all new comedy series that feels both familiar and fresh.
Deadloch, described lovingly by its creators as ‘funny Broadchurch’, takes audiences to an unsuspecting small town in Tasmania, where a dark mystery is beginning to reveal itself.
Deadloch is preparing to celebrate Winter Feastival, a high-brow arts festival that tends to attract particularly pretentious guests from Hobart, when the community is suddenly shaken by the discovery of a dead body.
Enter Abby Matsuda, played by Nina Oyama, an aspiring detective on the local police force. She’s tasked to solve a murder alongside her straight-laced superior Dulcie Collins (Kate Box), delightfully dopey Sven (Tom Ballard) and the chaotic detective direct from Darwin, Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami).
For fans of the Kate’s past offerings, the premise could sound uncharacteristically grim. Deadloch is just as loaded with the duos trademark comedy, but the mystery at the core of the series offers extra excitement as underlying secrets come to light.
Speaking to OUTinPerth, Nina Oyama says the balance of comedy and mystery is just part of what’s exciting about the series.
“The first thing I read was the pilot, and it was so funny, and it laid the groundwork for so many funny characters, but it also did set up the series in a way that made me obsessed with the crime story, because I love true crime podcasts. I love Mare of Easttown and I love Broadchurch, so I was super intrigued by both the crime, but also the way that they present it in a really funny, engaging way with all these great characters.
Nina’s character Abby is a well-intentioned and talented officer, but nervous and eager to impress. Often overlooked by louder personalities or ignorant men, Abby is nobly determined to get the job done whatever the cost. Apparently much more relaxed than her jumpy counterpart, Nina says she can still see some of herself in Abby.
“I do think there’s a lot of similarities between Abby and me. I remember when we were talking about the character and I felt like very driven to impress the Kates and Mads and Kate Box when I was on the set,” Nina says.
“She loves crime and she wants to pursue her passion in that area, while also impressing like Dulcie and Eddie so I think there was a bit of a corollary with me wanting to prove myself as an actor and show everyone that I’m okay at this,” she laughs.
“She does take a lot of initiative and she’s originally wanted to be a forensic pathologist, she’s really interested in the scientific side and how evidence from the murderer can be dissected and used for more information in a really cool and creative way.”
Nina is in good company among exceptionally talented comedians and Aussie legends, with a roster than includes Alicia Gardiner (Offspring), Pamela Rabe (Wentworth), Kris McQuade (Wentworth) and Susie Youssef (The Project) alongside herself, Box, Ballard and Sami. With this many funny people on set, it could sometimes be hard to get work done.
“I think it took me like two weeks to stop laughing at Matt. I think everybody just was like laughing all the time, especially in those first early episodes.
“We also did get to do a little bit of improv on set, so it was it was really electric. I had to train my face not to laugh and at some point, I got pretty good at it. But then occasionally, Boxy, or Tom Ballard, or Mads would do something and I would just corpse completely collapsing us.
“Corpsing in comedy is when you start laughing when you’re not meant to be laughing. There are a lot of corpses and I did a lot of corpsing which is not in the edit, but you know, definitely happened.
Despite Abby’s infectious charm, her insufferably narcissistic forensic scientist fiancée James, played by Nick Simpson-Deeks, is not laughing. He even treats their impending wedding as little more than an irritating chore. Behind the scenes though, playing up the uncomfortable dynamic proved fun for Nina and Nick.
“I love playing against Nick and James is such an incredibly written character, like he’s so awful, like the most awful men I’ve ever met, compared to Nick who is the loveliest guy. He’s just such a good actor, he kind of like delights in being a mean guy. It was really funny to play off of him in those scenes.”
While Abby struggles with her relationship, other threads of Deadloch’s community begin to fray as they reckon with the shocking murder. Many of the other women face different challenges, particularly the town’s tightly-knit community of lesbians and queer women.
“It’s like, Mare of Easttown meets The L Word!” Nina says.
“Lesbian Mare of Easttown is what I was calling it. Before I realized everyone was calling it Funny Broadchurch…”
Deadloch is a diverse town, with people from all walks of life converging in this small Tasmanian community. Nina explains there was a conscious effort to bring a range of stories to the screen in both the script and the cast’s performance.
“I think we will all conscious of the importance of what the script was doing, as we were shooting, I’d never read anything like it before. It really it does bring up a lot of issues that are quite heavy but the great thing about that is it’s also a comedy and it balances light and shade really well.
“We were all very conscious of the importance of this show when we were filming it and it made us want to be even funnier, and be even more serious when we needed to be. I think we all felt this great responsibility to honour the Kate’s work, because they had done such a phenomenal job of creating this world.
Deadloch‘s combination of comedy, mystery and original Australian storytelling is an exciting offering for fans of any or all of these genres, presenting something brand new in a familiar whodunnit-branded package.
“I’ve never seen a show like this. I honestly can’t believe that it doesn’t exist, but I’m so glad it does. It brings so many minority identities to the forefront, while also just being so very funny. There’s a lot of firsts going on here. It’s a real ground-breaking show.
Deadloch is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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