Logie winner finds family values in Kiwi ‘cosy’ crime series

Chelsie Preston Crayford is running late, but there’s a good reason. After five years of work on a film she’s written, Caterpillar is finally in pre-production. So, while the New Zealand actress is busy promoting A Remarkable Place to Die, the TV series in which she stars, she’s also preparing to direct her first feature.

It’s exciting and long-awaited, but it’s also not entirely foreign territory, even though the collision of commitments has some time-management consequences. The business is in her blood and she understands its rough and tumble. The daughter of acclaimed New Zealand filmmaker Gaylene Preston and musician Jonathan Crayford – who met on a movie set – Preston Crayford (Shortland Street, The Code, M3GAN) made her screen debut at age four in a TV commercial. In 2012, she won the Logie Award for Most Outstanding Newcomer for her performance as brothel madam Tilly Devine in Underbelly: Razor.

Chelsie Preston Crayford as Anais Mallory in A Remarkable Place to Die.Credit: Nine

In 2018, she wrote and directed Falling Up, an award-winning autobiographical short film about a single mother struggling in the aftermath of a break-up with the child’s father. She played the lead, her two-year-old daughter, Olive, played her child, and the film was shot by Olive’s dad, Preston Crayford’s former partner, cinematographer Raymond Edwards. More recently, Olive has been the subject of delighted remarks by her stepfather, Kiwi comedian and TV star Guy Montgomery, in his stand-up routines.

Even though she’s busy preparing for Caterpillar, Preston Crayford is happy to talk about the “cosy crime” series – her description – in which she stars as Anais Mallory, a detective who returns home to Queenstown on NZ’s South Island after years working in Sydney. She cheerfully admits that the notion of “cosy” crime initially required explanation for her. “When we were trying to find the tone of it, they kept talking about cosy crime,” she recalls. “And I was thinking, ‘What is that? How does that work? Do we play the cosy, or is it in the production design, in the costumes? How does that come through?’ Our first director, Pete Burger, identified it as being like the whanau, a Maori word meaning family: so the family of cops is the ‘cosy’.”

Anais joins the team at the local police station, the kind of lively assortment that can be found in comparable series such as Death in Paradise. Her friend, Inspector Sharon Li Feng (Lynette Forday), heads a small unit that includes detective Simon Delaney (Matt Whelan), who immediately resents the new arrival, capable sergeant Hoana Rata (Roimata Fox), and keen and green Constable Jarrod Renner (Dahnu Graham). Working with them is Anais’ old school pal and now pathologist Ihaka Cooper (Alex Tarrant).

Chelsie Preston Crayford (centre) and co-stars (from left) Lynette Forday, Matt Whelan, Roimata Fox and Dahnu Graham in A Remarkable Place to Die.Credit: Nine

Preston Crayford says Screentime New Zealand producer Philly de Lacey, who created the series with writer John Banas, referred to the show as “chocolate-box crime” as it showcases Queenstown’s natural assets, presenting them in vibrant, postcard-pretty colours. Comprising four, telemovie-length episodes, the series makes it apparent why the place has become a tourist magnet. Its title is a play on the name of the mountain range surrounding the town, known as The Remarkables.

“There are a lot of different facets to Queenstown and the episodes explore different aspects of the town,” Preston Crayford says. “The first episode looks at class: there are the people living at the backpackers’ hostel and a couple in this ornate and quite macho mansion. The second episode is set in the Arrowtown museum and explores the gold rush history.”

In addition to its scenic attributes, one of the bonuses in plot terms of using a tourist town as a base is having a community that’s constantly receiving visitors and new additions: travellers, seasonal workers, hospitality industry staff. So it can helpfully provide an ever-replenishing supply of victims and suspects for the local law enforcers.

Ostensibly returning home to spend time with her mother, Veronica (Rebecca Gibney), Anais arrives carrying emotional wounds that are gradually revealed. Preston Crayford describes her character as “a bit of a lone wolf”, adding, “When we meet her, she’s grieving and she’s been burned by a few personal relationships. She’s disappearing into her work and she’s extremely good at her job. She’s like a dog with a bone. She doesn’t take shit, but she’s also pretty kind and she has quite strong intuition about people and quite a strong moral compass. But she’s also willing to bend the rules to satisfy her suspicions about people.

Rebecca Gibney in A Remarkable Place to Die: keeping secrets from her daughter.Credit: Nine

“Over the course of the show, she starts to learn to open up to the people she’s working with. That’s one of the things that I loved the most about the show, and it was true of the experience of making it and on screen: those cops really become a core family.”

Which is fortunate for Anais as it’s clear from their first, tense encounter that her relationship with her mother isn’t an easy one. Both women are grieving from the relatively recent loss of family members: Anais’ father, Charles, and then her younger sister, Lynne (Tara Canton). “They’re both reeling,” says Preston Crayford. “They’ve lost the other two members of their family in quick succession. And that’s why Anais has come back, to figure out what happened, although she’s not telling anyone that. And they each probably lost the family member that they connected with more: Veronica had an easier time with Lynne and Anais had an easier time with her dad. Now they both need things that the other can’t provide.”

Gibney agrees about the tensions rocking the relationship. “Anais reminds Veronica of her husband. She’s bossy and inquisitive and was always more of a daddy’s girl. She loves fishing and hiking and has little in common with Veronica. I think Veronica feels that Anais let her down when she left home, so that hangs over their relationship. And Veronica’s keeping secrets from Anais which puts further strain on the already fractured relationship.”

Gibney describes Veronica as “different from any of the characters I’ve played” and admits, “When I first read the script, I struggled to connect with her. She’s brittle and slightly imperious, but there’s also a fragility about her borne of the losses she’s faced. I actually feel a little sorry for her: she’s all about keeping up appearances and that can sometimes be misread as shallow.

“I think she’s spent the majority of her life as a wealthy trophy wife and has had to learn to survive on her own. She’s desperate to save face and keep the status quo because if she slips too far beneath the surface I think she could possibly drown.”

Meanwhile, Preston Crayford’s relationship with her own mother has provided inspiration for her debut feature. “Caterpillar is what I’d call auto-fiction,” she says. “It’s set in the world of my life growing up, but the story’s fictionalised. The characters are based on me, my mum and my grandma. I grew up in a three-female house and it’s a multi-protagonist story about a maternal line, in the early 2000s. They’re going through what is going to be a massive transition for their family and the women are all at pivotal stages of their lives and all dealing with grief and loss in their own ways.”

For now though, on screen for Preston Crayford, it’s all about cosy crime.

A Remarkable Place to Die premieres on Sunday, November 17, 8pm on Nine and 9Now.

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