September 19, 2020
CRANK UP THE VCR:
TV tonight: gruesome tales of the Australian outback (Ammar Kalia, 9/19/20, The Guardian)
Mystery Road9pm, BBC FourAaron Pedersen returns as Indigenous Australian detective Jay Swan in this second series TV spin-off of Ivan Sen's feature films Mystery Road and Goldstone. Where Sen's films traded in a gritty, brutal vision of the Australian outback, the TV series takes a more procedural tone, laced with Pedersen's noir-referencing performance. In tonight's double bill, Swan is sent to the quiet coastal town of Gideon, where a decapitated body is found in the mangroves, leading him to suspect the presence of drug traffickers.
It is entirely unsurprising that no film/series has ever fused those great American art forms, the Western and the noir, as well as this entry from Australia. Pedersen's star-making role was in the excellent series City Homicide.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 19, 2020 7:35 AM