Australian and New Zealand TV

In Australia: Sundays, 8.30pm, ABC
In the UK: Saturdays, 9pm, BBC Four. Starts September 22

As a rule, most Australian cinema passes the UK by. Occasionally we get a breakout hit, such as Mad Max, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert or Strictly Ballroom, but largely, we miss out on the industry’s richness. A slight exception to the rule is horror and thrillers, usually ones set in the Outback, with the likes of Wolf Creek often doing better than you might expect, which is perhaps why the Australian TV industry is waking up to their possibilities for adaptation as series.

Mystery Road is a sequel to not just one but two movies that might have largely passed the UK public by, were it not for the likes of Amazon: the original Mystery Road and its sequel Goldstone, both of which starred Aaron Pedersen (Wildside, Water Rats, The Circuit, City Homicide, Jack Irish, A Place to Call Home) as an impressively craggy, lone detective, working in Western Australia near Perth. Essentially, a Wild West sheriff, it’s up to him to stand up for truth, justice and the Australian way when no one else will – usually because there is no one else.

Mystery Road: the series

ABC’s new six-part Sunday night thriller Mystery Road is more or less a direct continuation of those films that expands them out, even if Pederson is virtually the only actor to make it over from the original movies as the action has moved onto another location. It sees the rather highly nominated Judy Davis playing a small town police officer who calls in Pederson to help her when a local boy goes missing. However, it’s not long before they discover another boy is missing and that it might all tie into an old crime involving the boy’s uncle, who’s just getting released from prison – which is something no one wants.

Continue reading “Third-episode verdict: Mystery Road (Australia: ABC; UK: BBC Four)”