Series / Deadloch

Deadloch's finest.^note From left to right: Abby Matsuda, Dulcie Collins, Eddie Redcliffe, Sven Alderman.

Dulcie: The victim is male, sir.
Hastings: Is it? Right. This sort of thing, you just presume it's a woman.

Deadloch is an Australian comedy mystery series that premiered on Prime Video in 2023.

Tensions are high in the fictional Tasmanian town of Deadloch. After the first female mayor was voted into office, a community of lesbians moved to Deadloch to make it their home, much to the consternation of the conservative long-time residents.

And then a body is found on the beach. Odd Couple cops Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) and Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami) set out to find the killer, who isn't inclined to stop at one murder.

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Deadloch provides examples of:

• Affair Hair: A variant. The detectives find a pubic hair in the mouth of one of the victims, and it doesn't belong to his wife.
• Artistic License – Law Enforcement: There is no possible way all the top brass police would be hanging around Princess Mary and leaving a murder investigation to a small town Senior Sergeant and an out-of-state detective.
• Asshole Victim:
  • All of the murder victims abused women in some way.
  • Subverted hard with James; unpleasant as he was, Abby is horrified to see his tongue cut out, and isn't happy when Ray tries to act like it was karma.
  • Margaret dies a slow, painful death after being bitten by a snake. Considering this is right after it's revealed that she murdered her brother to avoid giving the island back to the Palawa, the audience doesn't feel too bad for her.
  • Ray, who suffers a bloody death being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice.
• Badass Adorable: Abby is sweet, earnest, and one of the younger characters on the show. Eddie's nickname for her is "Big Eyes." She is also naturally gifted with forensics and continues to help solve the case while suffering the effects of poison.
• Black Comedy: It's a comedic detective drama centered around a spate of gruesome murders.
• Butch Lesbian: Skye is probably the most prominent example, being both fairly butch and married to a woman.
• Cast Full of Gay: Dulcie, Cath, Skye, Nadiyah, Sven, Tammy, and those are just the main characters. Even Eddie implies she's had sex with a woman once or twice.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: Somehow, Dulcie's cell and hers alone gets inconveniently terrible reception. This makes staying on top of case updates more difficult, though surmountable if someone else is with her to volunteer their phone.
• Chase Scene: Eddie sucks at chasing suspects because she's out of shape. She has to pause to catch her breath.
• Country Matters: As an Australian show, the foul-mouthed characters freely dispense "cunt" as they see fit.
• Dead Guy on Display: The killer wants their work to be seen, so the bodies are placed in public locations for people to find. Taken Up to Eleven with Jimmy's death where he's found crucified and the police barrier to prevent the public from seeing the sight is accidentally taken down by the forensic tech tripping on a rope.
• Department of Redundancy Department: It's pointed out that "Deadloch Lake" is redundant in that "loch" itself already means "lake."
• Defective Detective: Eddie Redcliffe is an alcoholic, grieving mess who spends the first couple episodes ignoring evidence in an attempt to get out of Deadloch as fast as possible.
• Did Not Die That Way: Eddie was told that her partner Bushy got eaten by a croc. Her suspicions that something was amiss get confirmed when she learns he was actually shot in the head.
• Distant Duet: After spending the episode trying to recall a song she heard during a car ride with the likely murderer five years prior, Vic finally remembers the chorus. Everyone else in the makeshift holding cell joins in her rendition of Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know." Cut to the killer gleefully belting out the same song to his trussed-up future victims.
• Excessive Mourning: Vanessa Latham be thy name. She stages protests at all the Feastival events after her husband and brother-in-law are murdered, claiming the town should be in complete mourning because she's lost all the men in her life.
• Extreme Doormat: Poor Abby starts the series stuck in a controlling relationship with a man who constantly undermines her. She eventually grows a spine and breaks up with him.
• Fan Disservice: Trent Latham would be an otherwise attractive man, except when we see him he's dead. The camera takes a lingering gaze on his junk as his body is discovered in the first few minutes of the series.
• Finger in the Mail: The killer places the victims' tongues in the freezers of their respective female abuse victims as a twisted, egotistical gift.
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": Trent Latham's funeral is crashed by Ted not just digging up a grave as part of the investigation, but, digging up the wrong grave too!
• Gender-Blender Name: Everyone expects the new detective flying in from Darwin to be a man, as Eddie is almost always a nickname for Edward. While Eddie is definitely The Lad-ette, she's very much female.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Dulcie is noteworthy among the cast for not using Country Matters like punctuation, replacing it by "c-word" even when quoting the rather foul-mouthed Eddie.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Many of the men in Deadloch are openly misogynistic, especially Phil Mc Gangus and Commissioner Hastings.
• Hidden Depths: Sven is a slacker who isn't nearly as invested in his police duties as Abby and Dulcie. It turns out, this is just because his heart is in a different place. His true love is marine biology, which he has a master's in. He also speaks Indonesian.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Eddie is an emotional wreck because her police partner and best mate Bushy got killed. She was supposed to be with him at the time, but chose to go to a pub instead.
• Inevitable Waterfall: The murderer swims off into the rapids, only to be pulled over a waterfall and Impaled with Extreme Prejudice at the bottom.
• It's All About Me:
  • Dulcie's wife Cath has a very self-centered mentality about the murders, which is simply an extension on how she's made her marriage entirely cater to her own interests. She gets called out on it at the end of the season.
    Nadiyah: Fuck's sake Cath! Stop inserting yourself into everything, you emotional truffle pig!
  • The serial killer is very dramatic, leading the detectives to realize there's an egotistical element to the murders. When confronted, he demands to be considered the best feminist ally for his actions.
• The Lad-ette:
  • Eddie is a brash, foul-mouthed woman who drinks heavily and dresses like a middle-aged man on holiday.
  • Tammy wants to be a star football player and dresses and acts like it.
• Lesbian Jock: Tammy's subplot largely involves her wanting to be a football star and at one point she openly fantasizes about being married to Kehlani.
• Male Frontal Nudity: In a show where most nudity is from the shoulders up or contains a Modesty Towel or Modesty Bedsheet, the only example of full nudity is a very lingering gaze on the very dead Trent's genitals.
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: The killer's MO is to bump off Deadloch's men remorselessly. Subverted in that the killer was killing women in Sydney before moving to Deadloch to reinvent himself.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After spending much of the series being openly and loudly homophobic, Vanessa is horrified when Sharelle angrily tells her her son is gay. Vanessa's last scene shows that she's trying to be more supportive.
• The Nicknamer: Eddie refers to people by nicknames that aren't necessarily flattering. She dubs Abby "Big Eyes" and Dulcie "Sergeant Horsehair." She doesn't know Dulcie's actual name, even after becoming Fire-Forged Friends and moving to Darwin together.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Ray. He claims to be avenging women by targeting abusers, but by the finale he's happily planning to murder innocents and teenagers, not to mention having previously targeted sex workers.
• Not the First Victim: Trent Latham isn't the killer's first victim. He's the third. Rod Dixon and Sam O'Dwyer preceded him.
• Odd Couple: Dulcie is polite, fastidious, and committed to proper procedure. Eddie is a crude and reckless Cowboy Cop.
• The One Guy: Sven is the only man on the investigative team consisting of Dulcie, Eddie, and Abby. By the end of the season, he is seemingly the only male police officer willing to help them at all.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Eddie is usually willing to be completely loud, rude and flippant to basically anyone under any circumstances so when she yanks Dulcie aside to tell her not to warn Cath she's about to be arrested quietly and privately, it's a sign of not just the seriousness of the situation, but how much she's grown to care for Dulcie.
• Open-Minded Parent: The flash-forward epilogue shows that Vanessa has refocused her overzealous tendencies from Excessive Mourning of her husband to loudly supporting her gay son. She's last seen wearing a rainbow shirt and asking Sven's partner's pronouns.
• Police Are Useless: The majority of the police force are terrible at their job, including the police commissioner. They're always barking up the wrong tree. Exceptions: Eddie, Dulcie, Abby, and Sven.
• Passionate Sports Girl: Tammy is the best football player in Deadloch and dreams of going pro. She's eventually made captain of the otherwise all-male town team.
• Psycho Lesbian: In-Universe what Skye O'Dwyer is painted as when she becomes a suspect. The commissioner is practically frothing at the mouth to take down who he sees as a psychotic lesbian.
• Racist Grandma: Margaret Carruthers turns out to be quite the bigoted old crone. She even killed her own brother to prevent him from giving the Palawa people some of their land back.
• Red Herring: A lot of time and energy is spent suggesting Margaret Carruthers is involved with the serial killing, if not the killer herself. It turns out she just killed her brother to prevent him from returning their private island to the Palawa people.
• Sequel Hook: In the epilogue, Dulcie, Eddie, and Cath have moved to Darwin so that the detectives can find out what really happened to Bushy.
• Serial Killer: The murderer gradually reveals themself to be serial. Local reporters have a field day trying to decide on a pithy nickname for the killer; the best they can come up with are the "Deadloch Ripper" and the "Deadloch Widow."
• Sibling Murder: The final episode reveals that Margaret killed her brother six years ago to prevent him from giving their island back to the Palawa people.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Eddie has a very foul mouth. This is in stark contrast to Dulcie, who rarely gets more profane than "bum."
• Smug Snake: James, Abby's fiancé in the forensics department, is smug and condescending despite being largely incompetent.
• Spare a Messenger: The killer sends one naked, bloodied victim stumbling back into town to reveal that the bus hadn't traveled to safety like intended. His lack of tongue and fading consciousness make it hard to get any information out of him.
• Stealing the Credit: James repeatedly brushes off and insults Abby's ideas and then turns around a few scenes later and presents them to Dulcie and Eddie as his. It's a major factor in why she dumps him.
• Strange Cop in a Strange Land: A small rural town like Deadloch is a major change for City Mouse Eddie. Waltzing in with her confrontational attitude and disinterest in understanding the locals does not endear her to anyone.
• Struggling Single Mother: With the gentrification and a useless ex, Sharelle has to work five jobs to continue living and raising her young child in Deadloch.
  Sharelle: If I had free time, I would take my kid to the pool, not kill her fսcking dad.
• Sweet Baker: Vic at the bakery is a kindly older woman. Her employee Ray, on the other hand, is both a pastry chef and a serial killer.
• Taken Off the Case: The commissioner takes Dulcie off the case, alleging she's too sympathetic to the female suspects. She runs her own unsanctioned investigation in secret with Eddie, Abby, and Sven via phone calls and a team briefing in the women's bathroom.
• This Bear Was Framed: Kevin the seal is blamed for the mutilated bodies that washed up on the beach. Their cause of death was murder by a very human serial killer.
• Tongue Trauma: The killer cuts out their victims' tongues and gives them to the women the victims abused.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Dialogue suggests Deadloch is in Tasmania's north, however, the filming locations and maps used are all from Tasmania's south and nobody mentions setting foot in Launceston, the major city area of the north of Tasmania. It's also close enough to drive to both the Devonport terminal for the Bass Strait Ferry, and Hobart in less than a couple of hours (the two are 280km or 173 miles away from each other), and it's far enough out of town to be isolated and have only one road in.^note Cygnet which fills in for Deadloch's Main Street is 48km South of Hobart.
• Wife-Basher Basher: The killer's motivation. Believing himself to be a feminist ally, he kills abusive men in a deranged attempt to protect women.
• World of Snark: It's more difficult to find a non-snarky resident of Deadloch.