Deadloch season two: Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney confirm it’s coming and it’s going to be really hot

When Madeleine Sami was filming the first season of Deadloch in the wintry wilds of Tasmania, she had to do press-ups just to keep her body warm and fit.

“The Kates loved to throw a lot of physical comedy at that character, so there was one week when I had to jump through a footy club window, faint on a slide and fall into a swimming pool.

“I’m in my 40s so I have to try and keep my body limber because I never know what the Kates are going to throw at me,” Sami told The Nightly, adding that she suspects her castmates secretly took videos of her on-set callisthenics.

The Kates are Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney, the two brains and personalities behind Deadloch, the quirky crime drama-comedy that put Tassie on the map for an international audience.

A year after the series premiered, Amazon Prime Video has confirmed the show is returning for a second season, which will go into production later this year.

This time, as it was teased in the final moments of season one, the action will move from Tasmania to the sweltering tropics of the Northern Territory. In the blistering heat and humidity of the Top End, Sami is not going to have to work as hard to keep her body loose. It’s like being at Bikram yoga, but all the time.

“The heat is going to be huge, but that’s our aim,” McLennan said. “We really want the audience to be able to feel it through their screens and smell it.”

While Amazon can’t pump scent through the TV (you’d need to go to one of those 4D cinemas for that odd experience), many shows and movies have managed to capture the vibe of oppressive heat, making it work in creating atmosphere.

Sweat constantly dripping, clothes forever soaked and people going a little mad, unable to escape the thick, fetid air. It’s perfect for a murder mystery, one in which Eddie’s former police partner has been found dead.

While the first season was able to draw on and skewer the conventions of a Scandi noir, Deadloch’s second instalment isn’t going to be tied to one thing, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its reference points.

“This is the show that’s sort of hugging the tropics and the equator,” McLennan said.

McCartney added, “We’ve been looking at crime films and shows from Southeast Asia, Thai supernatural horrors, Miami crime shows, Southern Gothic, Louisiana bayou-type stuff, the Florida Everglades.

“Basically anything that’s like that. And it’s an amalgam of all those things.”

Think, the cosy British crime procedural Death in Paradise crossed with hypnotic and bewildering Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and the 90s erotic thriller Wild Things.

“That’s exactly what it is!” McCartney exclaimed, with a laugh.

When Deadloch was released in June 2023, Australian audiences knew there was something special about what was essentially a buddy cop comedy. But it was the distinctly Australian humour, the recognisable but off-kilter rhythm of its jokes, the kookiness of its ensemble of characters, and the humanity at the heart of two seemingly opposite performances, from Sami and Kate Box.

Sami was Eddie, the brash and loud out-of-towner sent to help solve a series of murders in a small town, and Box was Dulcie, the more reserved local cop. Together, they were a formidable force, but only if they didn’t kill each other first.

It didn’t take long for the rest of the world to take notice and the series reached the top 10 list on Amazon Prime Video in 165 countries. It was an international hit.

Box was in a bar in Nashville when, “this full cowboy just came up to me and was like, ‘Dulcie Collins, what are you doin’ in these parts?’

“It was wild where I found people’s love for it. It’s been incredibly heartening to know that it spoke to so many people.”

Sami has been tagged in social media posts in which fans have cosplayed as Eddie, right down to the makeshift paper sandals. The character is chaos, but she can’t wait to step into that unconventional footwear again, even though inhabiting Eddie is exhausting.

“She’s so high energy and intense,” Sami explained. “Everything is just so heightened, and I have moments of being like that but not as much as Eddie.

“The love for these characters and the story has been insane.”

Deadloch is one of the most successful commissions from Amazon Prime Video’s Australian team, a stable that has also included the Sigourney Weaver-led drama Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, the Wiggles doco Hot Potato, the cricket docuseries The Test, The Defenders documentary about footballer Hakeem al-Araibi and comedy Class of ’07.

Deadloch is the first scripted series to get a second season, and the six-episode series will also film some scenes in Queensland. The production has funding from both NT and Queensland’s state screen bodies. It forms part of Amazon’s upcoming slate during a time when the federal government still has not released the details of what a content quota on international streamers might look like.

Also in production now is an Australian version of Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais’s The Office, the historical drama The Narrow Road to the Deep South, starring Jacob Elordi, and another Northern Territory-based series, Top End Bub, the series sequel to Miranda Tapsell’s rom-com film, Top End Wedding.

There must be something about the land of croc misadventures (McLennan joked they’ve already warned non-Territorian, director Gracie Otto, to stay out of the water) that makes for a fertile storytelling backdrop.

“We’ve got these massive landscapes, the horizon just stretches on forever, a big sky with massive clouds that are threatening to drop rain but never do, McLennan said. “Plus, having these mangroves and the crocodiles, the humidity and the heat of that.

“We’re not creating a stylistically new show, but we are allowing the new location to inform the visuals for this new story.”