Two police officers\u2019 personal and professional lives collide in Neon\u2019s new local crime drama.\u00a0<\/p>\n
New Zealand knows how to make a good TV police drama. We bloody love a moody crime series set in a scenic part of the country, one that usually involves a city cop who comes back to their quiet little hometown to solve a perplexing crime and confront their troubled past. From The Brokenwood Mysteries and A Remarkable Place to Die to shows like The Gone, The Gulf and One Lane Bridge, we can\u2019t get enough.<\/p>\n
Now we can add Bust Up to that list, a new police drama that started on Neon last week. The six-part series is a co-production between Sky NZ and German broadcaster ZDF, and was created, written and produced by Paula Boock and Donna Malane (The Gulf). It\u2019s set in the fictional town of Waitote, a small community in Northland where everyone knows everyone and the stunning coastal landscape is captured in moody shades of grey and green, all sea and sky and lush forest in between.<\/p>\n
Roimata Fox as Detective Mihi Renata (Photo: Julie Zhu \/ Neon)<\/p>\n
But Bust Up has a major point of difference from other traditional crime drama shows. This is a cop-buddy drama with a twist, because both the lead police officers are women \u2013 and they\u2019re also ex-romantic partners. The past and the present collide unexpectedly for Constable Deb Brighton (Morgana O\u2019Reilly) and Detective Mihi Renata (Roimata Fox) in the show\u2019s opening moments, when they lock eyes again after a decade apart. The former lovers reunite in the most bizarre of situations: a bank robbery in Waitote\u2019s main street, carried out by a petty criminal wearing a giant shark mask.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Mihi\u2019s first day on the job, having recently brought her husband back to small, sleepy Waitote for an easier life. She had no idea she\u2019d be working alongside her ex-girlfriend, but it\u2019s clear there are still unresolved feelings between Mihi and Deb. Their personal issues need to be pushed aside as they team up to investigate the bank robber\u2019s criminal history, uncovering a local crime ring that involves stolen luxury cars and a woman being held hostage in a remote cottage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bust Up drops us straight into the drama with the robbery, and the show\u2019s opening scenes are full of dry humour and big energy. After that, however, the show shifts to a more sombre, darker vibe, before swinging back to the unusually comic (Deb performs some Scottish dancing to persuade a local \u2013 played by Josh Thomson \u2013\u00a0 to give her some CCTV footage). There\u2019s a lot going on in episode one, and initially, these constant shifts in tone mean that it\u2019s hard to know what kind of show Bust Up is trying to be \u2013 a comic cop story like Deadloch, a moody thriller like The Gone, or a quirky mystery like Brokenwood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Photo: Neon<\/p>\n
This unevenness eases as the story progresses into episode two, and Bust Up settles into becoming more of a quiet drama about small-town relationships than a wacky crime thriller. The tangled web of community connections moves the story smoothly through each episode, and the supporting characters are richly drawn, with an emotional depth often missing in police procedurals. Here the depiction of small town New Zealand feels authentic and believable, without ever being condescending.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mostly, Bust Up reminds us how refreshing it is to see two women take the lead in a cop drama. There\u2019s not a grizzly male detective in sight, and it\u2019s these capable, flawed women who tackle the bad guys and solve the crimes. As you would expect, O\u2019Reilly is brilliant and dynamic in this, and she and the talented Fox anchor the drama by playing off each other\u2019s contradictions \u2013 Deb is the impulsive, unorthodox partner, while Fox is rock-solid as the calm, guarded Mihi. They\u2019re ably supported by an impressive local cast that includes Arlo Green, Nicola K\u0101wana, Jodie Rimmer, Xavier Horan and Kura Forrester.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Will this all-women cop-buddy twist be enough to make Bust Up stand out in the TV crowd, though? If you like a police drama, you\u2019ll enjoy Bust Up \u2013 but even with Deb and Mihi in charge, the show\u2019s mellow country music soundtrack and quiet atmosphere may still feel too familiar for New Zealand audiences looking for a local crime offering that\u2019s fresh and different. The first three episodes are available now on Neon, and it\u2019s worth sticking with. Bust Up becomes more sure of itself as the drama unfolds, and the fallout as Mihi and Deb put the fragments of their relationship back together will certainly be worth watching.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bust Up streams on Neon, and screens on Sky Open on Wednesdays at 8.30pm.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two police officers\u2019 personal and professional lives collide in Neon\u2019s new local crime drama.\u00a0 New Zealand knows how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[141835,156,35545,14741,111,139,69,72270,1066,437],"class_list":["post-461834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-crime-drama","tag-entertainment","tag-morgana-oreilly","tag-neon","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-nz-tv","tag-pop-culture","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461834","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=461834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}