A car crash on a sun-blasted Queensland road strands Greta Scacchi’s Joan Kirkhope, a widowed English nurse hunting her husband’s secrets, with Bryan Brown’s Jack Darby, a retired detective who has swapped the squad room for a battered 4WD and a camping stove. From that collision the pair trundle through caravan parks, cane fields and coral cays, each episode handing them a fresh corpse and a knot of local grievances. The crimes are gentle, the humour laconic, and the landscapes do much of the acting: cane fires glow against night skies, reef water glitters like broken glass.
Brown plays Jack as a man who treats conversation like a sparring session, while Scacchi gives Joan the brisk politeness of someone who has spent decades calming fevered wards. Together they bicker over thermos coffee, interrogate surfer-cult leaders, expose insurance scams and, in a standout Christmas episode, unpick a scuba mishap that turns a dive boat into a locked-room mystery. Their chemistry is less will-they-won’t-they than won’t-they-just-admit-they-like-the-company, and the scripts are smart enough to let silences do the heavy lifting.
Shot entirely in Queensland, the first eight-part run moves from the Gold Coast to remote Mount Isa, using real motels, pubs and sugar-mill towns as backlots. Composer Kate Miller-Heidke threads surf guitars over strings, giving the outback a noir whistle. A second series dropped in December 2024, adding Sigrid Thornton as a mining heiress with skeletons in her haul trucks, and keeps the formula intact: one mystery, one tank of diesel, two people who still haven’t learned to share the playlist.
Production Details
Acorn TV / 2 Seasons / 14 Episodes / 2022 - Present
Created by: Phillip Gwynne, Glenys Rowe
Showrunner(s): Matt Campbell, Catherine Mackin, David Hannam
Writer(s): David Hannam, Giula Sandler, Paul Bennett
Producer(s): Pino Amenta
Cinematography: John Stokes
Music: Kate Miller-Heidke
Main Cast
Bryan Brown as Jack Darby
Greta Scacchi as Joan Kirkhope
Jolene Anderson as Detective Inspector Liz Darby
Anna McGahan as Rebecca Kirkhope
Sigrid Thornton as Miranda McNeil
John Waters as Ian Kirkhope
Casey Donovan as Sat Nav (Voice)
John Jarratt as Detective Senior Sergeant Bill Carlton
Yasmin Honeychurch as Kayla Bairnsdale
Miriama Smith as Sophie Bairnsdale
Brett Climo as Mick Riley
Steve Bastoni as Chris Steele
