{"id":327036,"date":"2026-03-13T03:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T03:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/327036\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T03:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T03:36:09","slug":"there-was-a-full-five-metre-croc-deadloch-returns-for-season-two-this-time-in-the-northern-territory-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/327036\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018There was a full five-metre croc\u2019: Deadloch returns for season two \u2013 this time in the Northern Territory | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

It wasn\u2019t long after touching down in the Northern Territory<\/a> that the Deadloch co-creator Kate McCartney realised the show\u2019s second season needed teeth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always had a pretty firm regard for crocodiles,\u201d McCartney says. \u201cBut once I got up there and I saw one, I was like, \u2018This is gonna become my entire personality.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The season one finale of the Emmy-nominated series had already committed McCartney and her longtime collaborator Kate McLennan to swapping the southern gloom of Tasmania for the muggy heat of the territory. The location proved serendipitous: once the pair behind Get Krack!n and the Katering Show landed in Darwin, they found an abundance of big characters and comic set-pieces ripe for their next whodunnit.<\/p>\n

They also booked themselves into three croc tours in a single day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was too many croc tours,\u201d McCartney says. \u201cHaving someone talk to you in those reflective sunglasses \u2026 they have this power, they\u2019re part-entertainment, part-safety officer. The things that were coming out of their mouths, you know that they\u2019ve said it 100 times on tours \u2013 it was just gold.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deadloch\u2019s original pitch was borne from both Kates\u2019 obsession with \u201creally bleak crime noir mystery\u201d while in the throes of early motherhood \u2013 breastfeeding at 3am and swapping notes about Olivia Colman\u2019s star turn in Broadchurch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The fictional Barra Creek\u2019s biggest industry is croc tours<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if we took a performer who\u2019s a bit like that Olivia Colman character,\u201d says McLennan, \u201cbut you dialled up the comedy a little bit [and] still made something that was really engaging and took the crime seriously?\u201d<\/p>\n

They found their answer in Deadloch\u2019s detective odd couple: the strait-laced Dulcie (Kate Box) and the broad and sweary Eddie (Madeleine Sami) \u2013 a territory local haunted by the death of their old wingman \u201cBushy\u201d. The show\u2019s second season leads them to Barra Creek, a town with \u201ca pub, a police station, and one bin\u201d whose biggest industry \u2013 croc tours \u2013 is beset by a rivalry between a tired old family business and the slick new operation of a celebrity fisher (Luke Hemsworth). Throw in some missing backpackers, a lot of unresolved baggage and the game is afoot. Or rather, a severed hand.<\/p>\n

To create Barra Creek, the production took over the town of Batchelor, an hour\u2019s drive from Darwin with a population of less than 400. A sign proudly proclaims its status as a three-time winner of the NT\u2019s Tidiest Town but, when visiting the set on a sticky day in September 2024, it\u2019s covered in red dirt \u2013 93 cubic metres of it trucked in to match other shooting locations.<\/p>\n

Deadloch creators Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney (centre) with their cast at the fictional Barra Creek Tavern \u2013 in the real town of Batchelor. Photograph: Kane Skennar\/Prime Video<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this season has a different tone; the last season was very dark, a lot of night scenes,\u201d explains the comedian and actor Nina Oyama inside Batchelor\u2019s pub. Oyama is back as the young constable turned aspiring forensics expert Abby.<\/p>\n

\u201cTassie noir, they called it. And this one\u2019s sort of like a spaghetti western \u2013 maybe not a spaghetti western, it\u2019s a schnitty western.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pub has been transformed into the Barra Creek Tavern, festooned with sun-bleached signage for beer, takeaways and pokies, and populated with extras from around the area \u2013 including one sun-kissed, bearded man named Ian who looks like Gandalf in Hard Yakka. He has taken time off from his part-time job sinking bores to try his hand at TV.<\/p>\n

Outside, locals drift in and out to watch the filming \u2013 with kids imploring the Kates to check out their sick bike tricks between takes.<\/p>\n

For all the croc gags and weather jokes, the Kates also leaned into the complexity of the Top End for this season, and the inherent tension of making a police procedural \u2013 even a funny one \u2013 in a part of the world with a long and troubled history<\/a> of law enforcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese crime shows, they are about truth and secrets,\u201d McLennan says. \u201cWe wanted to have a conversation about Australia, and how we don\u2019t have a great relationship with the truth and the past \u2026 there is a lot of denial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nina Oyama, who plays the young constable Abby Matsuda<\/p>\n

That context quietly simmers in the background: the glossy drone montages of wide rivers are peppered with the occasional youth detention centre. We meet a string of macho local detectives in aviators and too-tight chinos whose sketchy group chat inevitably recalls the cop-to-cop text message chains exposed<\/a> through the Kumanjayi Walker inquest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe territory,\u201d says Deadloch star Kate Box, back at the pub, \u201cis such a beautiful place and a terrifying place. And you look at \u2026 everything that\u2019s going on politically up here, and it\u2019s wild. It\u2019s a wild, wild place of many contradictions.\u201d<\/p>\n

These contradictions are given voice by Eddie\u2019s old schoolmate Miki, an Indigenous ranger played by Shari Sebbens who is perpetually on hold to welfare services after becoming a carer to her young nephew. She scolds Eddie for \u201ccarceral thinking\u201d, while pointing out how the stakes are different for a First Nations character merely suspected of a crime.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a blackfella was bumping off every land-stealing whitefella, 80% of this town would be dead,\u201d she tells Eddie in one episode.<\/p>\n

McLennan notes that many of the territory\u2019s tough-on-crime laws \u2013 and their racially skewed outcomes \u2013 have only grown harsher since they began work on the season: \u201cIt felt like we\u2019ve got one shot to tell a story. It would be very strange not to address any of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shari Sebbens as Miki, an Indigenous ranger<\/p>\n

True to form, though, the production process also saw plenty of daft humour. After their initial croc tours, the Kates had another encounter at a pub in Bynoe with a cyclone-fenced enclosure out the back.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe looked over and there was a full five-metre croc,\u201d McCartney says of the reptile, ominously named Two Dogs. \u201cThe casualness with which they treat one of the most impressive predators in the world\u2019s entire history, I think, is pretty amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it came to christening the awol crocodile that forms one of Deadloch\u2019s overlapping mysteries, the Kates stayed true to their original mission of dialling up the comedy. Their croc\u2019s name? Triple-pet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It wasn\u2019t long after touching down in the Northern Territory that the Deadloch co-creator Kate McCartney realised the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-327036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}