On "Deadloch," where a local works five jobs to stay in a supposedly progressive hamlet

And how this show gives that local their due

By D Menzies

There’s a strong tradition of dramedies in Australian and New Zealand storytelling — of characters in a given world handling heavy emotional terrain with or amid hysterics.

There’s a philosophy in this approach, I think, that speaks to a preference people have to process things both locally and otherwise. But it’s not an easy thing to balance and still have something that takes enough seriously for that to feel meaningful.

In the first couple of episodes of the Australian dramedy police procedural series, “Deadloch,” as detective Eddie Redcliffe storms around, swearing endlessly, I thought about that here and there. There was something about this series from creators Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney, including Madeleine Sami’s portrayal of Eddie, that kept me watching. It was just hard to not feel like it was more interesting than involving at first.

And then, well, the world-at-large continues to be too much, so Eddie being a sometimes grating whirlwind is still relatively low on that scale or the scale of annoyances one can experience via Chilltown. What I found made “Deadloch” thoroughly involving is the way its many side characters interweave and inform a story about the ways privilege can twist things. Some of these are ways that are relatively more straightforward and others are rarer to see.