New murder-mystery show is vintage Tassie Noir

A murder-mystery set in the twilight zone, Vicki Madden’s mesmerising new TV drama is a towering personal achievement for the Tasmanian-born writer and producer

The Gloaming creator Vicki Madden. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

VICKI Madden is visibly quite emotional as she fronts the media to announce the launch of her latest Tasmanian television series, The Gloaming. The announcement is a relatively modest affair on the Hobart waterfront, overlooking the harbour and the mountain which will feature prominently in the upcoming supernatural drama series.

Madden, the series’ writer and producer, is the first to admit she is uncomfortable being in the spotlight, but there is obvious affection as she describes the new series and expresses her gratitude for being able to produce it in her home state. Her voice catches ever so slightly as she concludes: “I am grateful beyond words.”

The Gloaming really is a towering personal achievement for Tasmanian born-and-raised Madden, who is best known at home as the creator of the highly-acclaimed mystery series The Kettering Incident, which was filmed entirely in Tasmania about three years ago.

The Kettering Incident starred Elizabeth Debicki. Picture: FOXTEL

She is a highly accomplished screenwriter, having worked on some of Australia’s most iconic TV shows, including GP, The Flying Doctors, Water Rats, Heartbreak High, Blue Heelers and more. And a stint in London saw her working as creative producer for iconic BBC series The Bill for two years, sparking public outcry when it became known there was an Australian running the very British show.

Yet for all that success in her chosen field, it was Tasmanian stories that she desperately wanted to tell. So the chance to make something as uniquely Tasmanian as The Kettering Incident was a huge triumph for Madden after returning home. Seeing her latest creation, The Gloaming, coming to life before her eyes right now is something that strikes a very emotional chord.

“It is a big deal for me,” she says, clearly relieved to be putting some distance between herself and the news cameras, heaving a sigh as we walk a little distance away.

“I’m from here, and I’ve had to live away for so much of my life just to get work to do what I love to do. So, to be able to come back home and have not just one but two shows made right here, it’s what every writer aspires to, to be able to tell your own stories.”

The Kettering Incident was filmed entirely in Tasmania. Picture: FOXTEL

Madden says, like a lot of Tasmanians, she left the state when she was 17 and never felt she could come home to do what she does. “But after I’d worked in London I went to Ireland, where I was working on a show called The Clinic,” she says. “Ireland is a place so steeped in culture and stories, and people there know these stories, they love telling them, and they kept asking me where I was from, what were my stories? I realised, wow, I’m not actually telling my story. I’m telling police stories, medical stories, and so on. I wanted to come home and tell my stories. So I came back and started to get in touch with myself and this place again.”

The Kettering Incident, co-produced by Foxtel and BBC Worldwide, was a game-changer both for Madden and for the Tasmanian television industry, bringing a major, big-budget, internationally-distributed TV production to the state.

A mystery thriller series with paranormal overtones, The Kettering Incident’s storyline was inspired by Madden’s own experience of returning to the place she grew up and feeling like she no longer fitted in.

The series was both popular and critically acclaimed and is still enjoying ongoing screenings in other countries around the world. Madden is a fan of Scandinavian police and mystery series, that distinctive genre now known as “Scandi Noir”, and that influence is so evident in The Kettering Incident that the new term “Tassie Noir” was coined to describe the genre she created.

The Kettering Incident's Matt Le Nevez and Elizabeth Debicki. Picture: FOXTEL

And now The Gloaming, set in and around Hobart, is continuing in the Tassie Noir vein with a murder mystery wrapped up in a ghost story, Madden’s signature blend of reality with the paranormal bleeding in around the edges.

The Gloaming, co-produced by streaming service Stan and Disney-owned ABC Studios International, is currently being filmed in southern Tasmania, with shooting expected to wrap around August. It will be a series of eight one-hour episodes and is expected to start streaming on Stan in the summer, with all eight episodes available at once.

When an unidentified woman is found brutally murdered, Detective Molly McGee (Emma Booth) must team up with Alex O’Connell (Ewen Leslie), a fellow cop with whom she shares a tragic past, to solve the crime. What begins as a routine investigation exposes something more insidious as political corruption and shady business dealings intertwine with sinister crimes and occult practices.

To catch the killer, Molly and Alex have to face the ghosts of their past, the unsettled dead that linger in the liminal space between light and dark, life and death —The Gloaming.

Joining the main cast will be popular Australian actor Aaron Pedersen, of Water Rats, The Secret Life of Us, Jack Irish and Mystery Road fame, New Zealand actor Rena Owen (Star Wars, Longmire), Matt Testro (Nowhere Boys, Neighbours) and newcomer Josephine Blazier, with more cast to be announced soon.

Aaron Pedersen, left, Emma Booth and Ewan Leslie at the announcement that streaming service Stan will broadcast The Gloaming, which will be shot entirely in Tasmania. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

“The story brings together elements of crime, gothic drama and the supernatural, and that truly excites me as a storyteller,” Madden says. “My island home of Tasmania is a mythical landscape, one of haunting beauty, yet marred by a long history of trauma. Time passes but the grief lingers. This is the beating heart of The Gloaming.

“It’s a ghost story, about haunted characters in a haunted landscape, entwining Tasmanian history into a gothic crime drama. And it’s sitting in that space that I like, between reality and the supernatural, and using the beautiful landscape to tell the story.”

Madden has learned to be highly secretive with her scripts following a spoiler leak in the early days of filming for The Kettering Incident, so details about the rest of the plot are being kept carefully under wraps. But there may be a few small hints in the way she describes the idea’s genesis.

“I come from convict ancestry,” she says. “My mother was Welsh and deeply superstitious, so I grew up in a very heightened superstition from her heritage. With this series, I’ve blended my interest in convict history with the stories I’ve learned about hexafoils and witch markings around old Tasmanian buildings.

“And I’m using that format of a police procedural, investigating a crime, as the spine of the story, which keeps it grounded in the real world so I can play in that supernatural world around it; ghosts, witches, and all sorts of things.”

Lead actor Emma Booth. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

In the lead role, as Detective Molly McGee, is Western Australian actor Emma Booth, who is currently based in Los Angeles but has flown in to live in Hobart for the duration of the production. Booth recently won an AACTA Award for her role in the film Hounds of Love and has also featured in TV series including Underbelly, Cloudstreet, Once Upon a Time and Glitch.

But, more than anything, Booth is thrilled about the idea of working on a spooky story, literally squirming with excitement as she confesses to being addicted to ghost-hunting TV shows. “They’re just so creepy, I love all that stuff,” she says. “And this show is creepy. I don’t think people will know what they’re in for.

“I’m really intrigued by the supernatural and ghosts, so I wanted to know how far we were pushing that stuff in this story, and the answer was a lot!”

Booth says she was approached to play the role of McGee after Madden saw her in Hounds of Love. As a fan of The Kettering Incident, Booth jumped at the opportunity.

“TKI is what sparked my interest in this place, it was all so gorgeous, so it was a no-brainer for me to sign on for this. And Vicki really is a genius, this is some of the best scripting I’ve read in my life. Her writing, I’ve never read anything like it, I just keep thinking how does your brain do this? How do you work this out?”

Booth describes herself as a nature girl, so she is happy to be staying in a house near Hobart’s Knocklofty Reserve, giving her easy access to a lot of bushwalking trails to enjoy in her free time over the four months of shooting. On her first visit to Tasmania, she says she has already fallen in love with the place.

“If this goes for more than one season I’ll be really happy that it’s here I get to come back to! Some jobs you kind of think, ‘ugh, I have to go back and live there again’. But here, I’m so excited about being here, I’d love to come back.”

Lead actor Ewan Leslie. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

Also thrilled to be working in Tasmania is Booth’s co-lead, fellow Western Australian actor Ewen Leslie, who most recently starred in the ABC mini-series The Cry, as well as having roles in Rake, Safe Harbour, Top of the Lake and Stan comedy series No Activity. Playing Detective Alex O’Connell, this is Leslie’s second time working in Tasmania, having been here about a year and a half ago for the filming of Jennifer Kent’s (The Babadook) upcoming film The Nightingale.

“That was a beautiful script,” he says of The Nightingale. “It will be a tough film but a really good film. It’s really confronting but easily one of the best film scripts I’ve read in this country. For The Nightingale I was only in Hobart for two weeks and then shot in Bothwell for a week and then I was done, so this will be the longest time I’ve spent here. For The Gloaming I get to come to Hobart and shoot here for three and a half months and I’m thrilled with that. I have a family, two small kids, and they’re all going to move down to live with me as well. I mean look at this place! It’s stunning! So to be able to shoot here for an extended period of time, it’s great.”

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