The Get Krack!n creators are killing it in screwball comedy Deadloch

Deadloch ★★★★
Amazon Prime, Friday

Deadloch wants you to laugh until you cry. A comically charged homicide procedural, the eight-hour limited series from the scything double act of Get Krack!n creators Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney laces the familiar pillars of a small-town murder mystery with absurdist excess. It is, like its authors, a double act in perfect sync, one that pushes the story to its limits, whether daft or murderous. “I need to name some feelings,” declares a rattled character, but the show itself doesn’t allow for such easy definition.

Laugh until you cry: Nina Oyama as Abby and Kate Box as Dulcie in Deadloch.Credit: Patrick Bradley/Prime Video

Are murders funny? No. Can the people reacting to, or even investigating them, be funny? Absolutely. Get Krack!n showed us, via a chaotic morning television show, that projecting control was a double standard turned on women.

That perseveres here for Dulcie Colins (Kate Box), the station sergeant in the titular Tasmanian town where the cutting-edge arts festival gets off to a rough start with the discovery of a man’s body. A former Sydney detective, Dulcie is hindered at every turn, whether it’s by eccentric locals or a fatuous coroner.

Deadloch honours some tropes, such as menacing landscape shots and wound theory, but absolutely upends other. The Darwin detective brought in to run the case, Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami) is the comic offspring of Sir Les Patterson and Ace Ventura, an insult machine and gung-ho to the point of reckless incompetence. As a character, Eddie is initially too much, but as with much of this expertly-paced narrative her revelations are unfolded with telling care. Eddie’s always shotgun blast funny, but increasingly honest.

The story is seeded with vivid characters, from Dulcie’s hovering wife Cath (Alicia Gardiner) to a nervous rookie constable with screwball moxie, Abby Matsuda (Nina Oyama). What lingers, however, is the portrait of the community, a conservative locale transformed by the culture and money of progressive women. Misogyny tinges the town and the case – a buffoon can be the butt of the joke and the source of a physical threat. History and humour are intertwined: the commentary on lesbian relationships is anthropologically hilarious.

By the end of the six episodes supplied to critics, the story has built both momentum and giddily reliable routines. There are red herrings and perfect asides – Abby observes that Eddie’s digs “look like a Tracey Emin installation”. While it remains to be seen how the show deals with the explication of evil, there’s a genuine weight on Dulcie, who is torn between work and community, and a nuanced vision of a functioning but fractured town. The Kates really are killing it.

FUBAR ★★
Netflix

As a veteran CIA field agent taking out cliched bad guys, 76-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger is a creaky proposition in this action-comedy. The show is equally arthritic. A globe-trotting shoot-em-up with Big Granddad Energy, FUBAR stars Schwarzenegger as Luke Brunner, a legendary spook shocked to discover that his beloved daughter, Emma (Monica Barbaro), is also working for the Agency. This bring your daughter to work day has slit throats and hurt feelings.

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a legendary spook shocked to discover that his beloved daughter is also working for the CIA.Credit: Netflix

Created by Nick Santora (Scorpion, Reacher), the series is an update of James Cameron’s True Lies, which Arnie also starred in, except that this time, Schwarzenegger’s spy is thrown together with his child and not his spouse. The two trade quips and alpha status, with a generational clash as the conservative father realises that his daughter wasn’t who he thought she was. There’s a suitcase nuke to recover, but the real risk is that Luke handles Emma’s vibrator.

A G(r)eek chorus of supporting players, including Barry (Milan Carter) and Roo (Fortune Feimster), supply a constant stream of jokey commentary, which is a plus since the action sequences lack verve and feature numerous shots of Schwarzenegger’s double with his back to the camera. It’s a mild comedy and a tepid adrenalin shot. Leaning into satire might have saved it.

White Men Can’t Jump
Disney+

As a remake of Ron Shelton’s vibrant 1992 sports comedy about a pair of basketball hustlers, one black and one white (played back then by Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson), this feature at least ticks some necessary boxes.

Jack Harlow and Sinqua Walls in the remake of White Men Can’t Jump.Credit: Parrish Lewis/20th Century Studios via AP.

Musician Jack Harlow and Sinqua Walls play Jeremy and Kamal, public court grifters in a very different basketball era. Director Calmatic is both NBA and hip-hop savvy, but the film lacks any real urgency and it’s overlooked that the original film had a terrific third wheel – Rosie Perez as a spiky girlfriend with Jeopardy ambitions.

Plebs (seasons 1-5)
Binge

Binge has added all five seasons of this now concluded British sitcom, which was a mix of The Inbetweeners and a Carry On farce as an initial trio of young men – Marcus (Tom Rosenthal), Stylax (Joel Fry), and their slave Grumio (Ryan Sampson), try to make a go of it in ancient Rome as non-citizens.

Ryan Sampson, Tom Rosenthal and Jon Pointing in the British sitcom Plebs.

They chase after women (mostly without success), try to make money, and stumble into cultural curiosities. The comedy is quick-witted, if repetitive, and it rags on the protagonists mostly without pause, but it’s never been a standout series.

The Barking Murders
BritBoxBeanpole comic and The Office co-creator Stephen Merchant capably steps into a dramatic role in this British crime drama, playing the real-life serial killer Stephen Port, who in 2014 and 2015 drugged, raped, and murdered four young gay men in the vicinity of his home in East London.

Stephen Merchant in The Barking Murders.Credit: Britbox

Neil McKay’s limited series focuses on humanising the victims, so that their loss is genuinely felt by their grieving families, who have to fight against a shoddy and sometimes deliberately ignorant

investigation by the Metropolitan Police. Port should have been caught after one killing, not four.

Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me
Netflix

As with recent documentaries about Britney Spears and Pamela Anderson, the American celebrity-industrial complex built famous women into towering, shaky edifices that replaced their personalities with sex appeal.

Anna Nicole Smith on the red carpet in 2005.Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith

No example is more obvious than the late Anna Nicole Smith, the Playboy covergirl turned fashion model turned wife of an octogenarian billionaire.

Ursula Macfarlane’s documentary is an attempt to understand who Smith was, but too often it substitutes new cliches – visually and emotionally – for the existing outline of voluptuous but ditzy blonde bombshell. These answers require better questions.

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Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.