The Twelve: Cape Rock Killer ticks many boxes for crime drama fans

When it comes to solid Australian crime drama, The Twelve figured out the formula.

That’s not a slight. Formulas can be good things. It gives the audience a comfortable framework to sit in while still secreting a few tricks. It’s also what allows The Twelve to capitalise on its greatest asset: Sam Neill.

Neill is the constant across three seasons of the Binge drama. His character, defence barrister Brett Colby, is like Virgil, a trusted companion to guide us through the show’s mysteries.

Colby has a confidence and calmness about him – and competence, we love seeing people being competent at their jobs. He may be a defence lawyer, but he acts with integrity. This is a character you’ll follow around.

The Twelve is an anthology series in which the crime, the court case and the cast changes every season.

This third instalment is set in Western Australia, focused on the death of Amanda (Eryn Jean Norvill, who was so brilliant originating the titular role in Sydney Theatre Company’s The Picture of Dorian Gray), a young woman whose father had been a convicted criminal connected to the 1968 deaths of two teen girls at Cape Rock.

Amanda had set out to prove her father’s guilt, but in the process, discovered something else, something that led to her murder. The man accused is Alan (William Zappa), who had been at that party five decades earlier with his now wife, Beth (the great New Zealand actor Sarah Peirse).

The two crimes, it follows, must be connected and for the truth to come out about what happened to Amanda, the past must be relitigated too.

The prosecutor (Danielle Cormack) is a former colleague of Colby’s, and the jury includes characters such as Andrew (Ewen Leslie), a frustrated music composer, Jazmyn (Nathalie Morris), a good-time party girl, and a history teacher and single dad (Phoenix Raei).

The jurors’ personal lives and experiences, and how it influences and shades their judgements in the case is part of The Twelve’s conceit, which was adapted from a Belgian format, De twaalf.

The series is not groundbreaking but it does plenty of things right, especially for audiences who can’t enough of crime dramas.

It ticks a lot of tropes, and the 1968 parallel case, will satiate, in particular, the true crime obsessives – and there are a lot of them – who loves nothing more than a cold case involving dead young girls.

It is a workmanlike show that scratches an itch for the genre’s fans. And, of course, there’s Sam Neill, who makes what he does look effortless.

The Twelve: Cape Rock Killer is streaming on Binge