Deadloch

Amazon

In the midst of juggling a bunch of Apple TV shows like Widow’s Bay, Margot’s Got Money Troubles and Friends and Neighbors, I’ve also circled back around to catch up on a few things I’ve missed. In particular, I’ve picked up some crime dramas that have recently added new seasons. New seasons that are getting perfect Rotten Tomatoes scores.

The first show is Deadloch, the Australian murder mystery comedy, which has returned for its second season almost three years after the first. In fact, both seasons have 100% Rotten Tomatoes scores, and I certainly do recommend watching both of them. But even after three years and forgetting most of what happened, I’ve also found you can leap right into season 2 without much backstory if you just want to do the current one.

Deadloch pairs together polar opposite detectives, the straight-laced Dulcie with the foul-mouthed and just generally foul Eddie, two women with a complicated working relationship given their clashing personalities. But both are good at solving crimes, and here in season 2, Eddie is reluctantly stuck in her hometown when an arm turns up in the mouth of a dead alligator, and many more body parts arrive over time.

The show is hilarious. Easily the funniest crime series I’ve ever seen, and with a compelling mystery layered on top of it at the same time. Its perfect scores make total sense as you wade through the series, and I highly recommend it. You can find it on Amazon Prime Video.

The second show is The Chestnut Man: Hide and Seek, a Danish show that has returned to Netflix after a full five-year break. That’s forgivable, however, as it's based on the second book in the series, which only came out this past March, hence the wait time.

The Chestnut Man references a serial killer who was the main antagonist in season 1, where again, both seasons of this show have 100% scores. In season 2, it is an entirely new case, and again, five years later, I really did not remember anything about season 1, but it doesn’t matter; you can watch this season without watching the first (though of course, you might as well watch the first if you haven’t seen it).

This time around, a serial stalker hunts down men and women alike, taunting them with videos filmed of them and rhyming texts, the detectives trying to track potential victims and save them before they’re killed.

While there are a zillion European murder mystery series out there, this one really is top-notch. In season 2, especially, in a genre where it’s hard to surprise me these days, there’s a turn here I was genuinely stunned by, a trigger I thought a show like this would never pull. It really is unlike anything else out there, and I might like season 2 better than season 1, even. Though both have those perfect scores. But yes, I recommend both Deadloch and The Chestnut Man, two or four seasons, whatever you need to watch.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.