Marta Dusseldorp’s ABC crime thriller recaptures its nutty spirit
By Debi Enker
Bay of Fires (season premiere) ★★★★
When we left Stella Heikkinen (Marta Dusseldorp) at the end of the 2023 debut season of Bay of Fires, she was relishing the sweet smell of success. She’d just executed a successful financial scam, in the process uniting the residents of Mystery Bay, her previously unwelcoming home town. She’d also apparently managed to outwit, outrun and even benefit from the demise of several people intending to kill her. So things were looking good.
Marta Dusseldorp as Stella in season two of Bay of Fires.
But as anyone familiar with this savvy, blackly comic crime series will be aware, Stella’s triumph and sense of being in control are likely to be temporary. That’s just how things work for the onetime corporate high-flyer, known as Anika van Cleef until she was relocated to a remote Tasmanian outpost, ostensibly for her own safety.
In the series created by Dusseldorp with Andrew Knight and Max Dann, Stella and her children, Otis (Imi Mbedla) and Iris (Ava Caryofyllis), have been dumped by the government’s witness-protection program in a town that isn’t marked on any map. Despite the striking scenery, Mystery Bay isn’t the kind of place that might feature in Apple Isle tourist promotions: it’s the wild west, populated by dodgy characters and governed by its own idiosyncratic rules.
As Stella discovered through the first season, Mystery Bay is akin to an open-air prison: most of the population have a criminal history and can’t leave. Fragments of their colourful background stories are revealed in flashbacks at the start of episodes.
Stella was initially wrenched from her luxe life because hitmen were gunning for her after a Russian investment in her family’s company failed to pay off. That threat kicked off a tale that grew to incorporate a variety of canny components.
Stella (Marta Dusseldorp) and her teenage children Otis (Imi Mbedla, left) and Iris (Ava Caryofyllis) have settled into their new life in season two of Bay of Fires.
It’s a crime thriller, with the relocated Stella as prey not only for the Russians but also for cult leader Thaddeus (Matt Nable) and crime matriarch Frankie McLeish (Kerry Fox), who’s presumed dead at the start of the second season. It’s also a fish-out-of-water story of a corporate chief and her kids reduced to living in a shack and wearing op-shop clothes.
At the same time, it’s a family drama about Stella’s struggle to keep her kids safe and deal with teenage Otis’s emerging rebellious streak. And then there’s a romcom element involving Stella’s suitably bumpy relationship with tow-truck driver Jeremiah (Toby Leonard Moore).
While lives are always in peril, Bay of Fires can be laugh-out-loud funny, as the shootout in the final episode of the first season, worthy of a Sergio Leone western, attests. The opening of the new one recaptures that happily nutty spirit when a couple of backpackers, one a self-important influencer, stumble into town requesting oat lattes.
At this early stage, the townsfolk, flush with cash from Stella’s scheme, have been spending wildly on consumer goods, the cafe is charging extortionate prices and Stella and her kids have a new home. She’s paying Thaddeus for border security but is being threatened by Frankie’s coolly menacing business partner who’s demanding that she resume their drug-manufacturing business.
So she’s back in her blue op-shop parka, assuring Jeremiah, “I have things under control.” And, once again, it’s fun watching her best laid plans implode.
Bay of Fires premieres on Sunday, June 15, on the ABC at 8pm.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.