The similarities between Amazon’s Deadloch and HBO’s True Detective: Night Country are astonishing. Both feature two female lead detectives solving crimes involving the homicides of multiple men. Both feature LGBTQ characters—though there are far more in Deadloch—and both deal with injustices surrounding indigenous communities (in Tasmania and Alaska respectively). And both, oddly enough, feature missing tongues.
The really big, important difference between the two is that Deadloch is a fantastic mystery with a compelling story and a truly wonderful cast of characters, with a whodunit story that keeps you guessing right up to its brilliant and unexpected conclusion. It’s one of the best mystery TV shows I’ve seen in a long, long time. Night Country, on the other hand, is barely a mystery at all.
The other big difference is that Deadloch, while a story focused on a series of grisly murders, is often quite hilarious, whereas Night Country is overwhelmingly bleak. The town of Deadloch is celebrating a regional lesbian food festival, fending off a menacing seal named Kevin, and dealing with the various conflicts and relationships of its small town politics. Deadloch is cold and grey but often still lively and cheerful. Its citizens aren’t always chipper, but they lead real, full lives. The town of Ennis, Alaska is in perpetual night—a cool setting, to be sure—but never feels warm or alive at all. None of its characters show any affection for one another. It is a place people come to dig deeper into their misery, not to build community.
The social issues dealt with in Deadloch are relevant and handled with both humor and unflinching sincerity. The indigenous people feel real. Night Country engages in that most aggravating of tropes when it comes to indigenous Americans: the Noble Savage, in which everyone has some mystical connection to the land and exists on another spiritual plane than the white people around them. Deadloch handles its indigenous community like real people with humor and actual struggles and lives. Think more along the lines of the wonderful Reservation Dogs. Night Country gives us some vague protests and speeches and symbols. But where are the jokes?
LGBTQ characters are abundant in Deadloch, including one of the lead detectives. Weirdly, neither of the female leads in Night Country is queer, though various fans and critics have tried to argue that they really are, beneath all the straight sex they’re having. In Deadloch, the culture clash between the influx of lesbian residents and the more conservative locals who used to run things is present but handled with a realist resignation that never comes off as preachy. The homophobes are people, too. Oddly enough, treating people like people might actually dredge up that most priceless ore: Empathy.
Deadloch also just does mystery better. The detectives actually do detective work, though they juggle this with personal lives and conflicts. There are various suspects that pop up along the way, and the detectives pursue these suspects vigorously, following clues and red herrings until new evidence and revelations lead them in new directions. We, as viewers, question everyone. The show misleads both the detectives and the viewers expertly, sending us down rabbit holes and headlong into dead-ends; the detectives piece together the answer bit by bit, without the help of deus ex machinas. There are no gaping plot-holes and no reliance on supernatural headfakes. When we finally find out who did it in the end, it’s not only a shock, it comes packed with some incredibly relevant, funny and insightful social commentary that I didn’t see coming at all. A lot of people complain that shows with a lot of diversity and representation are too “woke” and I think that’s a silly thing to say. What I think is more prescient is that too many of these types of shows are too preachy, relying on pushing a message rather than telling a great story. The end of Night Country felt preachy.
Deadloch manages to be a show with a lot of diversity and representation that avoids preachiness and relies instead on brilliant writing, acting, humor and as solid a mystery as I’ve seen in years. I’d rank it up there with shows like Mare Of Easttown or the first season of Broadchurch (another great mystery with a terrific female lead). Or, if we’re going for humorous mysteries, Only Murders In The Building springs to mind (especially Seasons 1 and 3). I mean, really, which of the Pickwick triplets did it? I still want to know!
Of course, many people argue that the only reason anyone could possibly dislike Night Country is that they hate women (apparently women themselves cannot possibly dislike this show!)—and certainly there are sexists out there who hate women or shows with female leads. I offer up Deadloch as a fantastic alternative and a show that doesn’t just make its women “strong” but also funny, vulnerable, intelligent, quirky, surprising and so much more. A strong female character doesn’t just have to be a toxic dudebro in a woman’s body—as both Navarro (Kali Reis) and Danvers (Jodie Foster) are throughout Night Country, displaying every obnoxious alpha male trait in the book—a strong female character can be, well, just a real human being, flawed and fabulous and everything in-between. Detectives Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) and Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami) prove this in spades. They’re wildly different people whose personalities certainly clash, and also some of the best-written characters I’ve seen in a long time. I cared about both of them deeply and still do.
Go watch Deadloch on Amazon Prime Video. You won’t regret it.
Check out the other great mystery shows you need to go watch ASAP on my most recent Best Mystery TV Shows list.
You can read my review of Night Country here. Check out my YouTube channel for more discussion of that and many other TV shows.
