A journalist is assigned to write about a traumatic event, speaks to wary locals, scratches away layers of obfuscation and discovers All Is Not What It Seems. Yes, we’ve been here before. Ditto for crime stories based in rural Australian locations; the bounty for this year alone includes Deadloch, Black Snow, Bay of Fires, The Clearing and Ivan Sen’s feature film Limbo.
However, Stan’s new four-part mystery series Scrublands, directed by Greg McLean and adapted from Chris Hammer’s bestselling novel of the same name, demonstrates why genre-ified tropes and formulas have evergreen appeal if staged with some vim and flair.
These kinds of narratives don’t have to be fresh, per se: according to Campbellian wisdom there’s nothing new under the sun. But templated stories should always feel fresh and be invigoratingly staged. That’s certainly the case in Scrublands, which at its worst feels a little potboiler-ish but is grippingly sustained across four episodes of roughly one hour apiece and never overstays its welcome.
The series begins provocatively, with a priest – Jay Ryan’s Bryon Swift – shooting at his own congregation with a sniper rifle, murdering five people before turning the gun on himself. Not the most effective recruitment drive for the church. Twelve months later, a Sydney Morning Herald journalist – Luke Arnold’s Martin Scarsden – arrives in the town where it happened to pen a “one year on” anniversary article. One local accuses him of writing “torture porn” but Scarsden says his brief is a colour piece: “just weekend supplement stuff”. Nothing to challenge or upset people. The protagonist will change his tune, of course, when he gets an inkling that something is wrong with the official narrative and attaches himself to the story like a dog with lockjaw.
We know that things can’t be as they seem but we saw the priest killing in cold blood, so what kind of twists and turns await? Good mystery writing is sometimes about appearing to box things in, to construct narrative limitations before finding ways to circumvent them – by widening the context, perhaps, or unveiling different perspectives, or laying out a tangled backstory, all of which is the case in Scrublands. Like other crime mysteries such as The Dry, McLean alternates between timeframes, the current one having a hot glazed look, the palette taking on cooler hues during earlier times. The latter moments feel reflective, distanced from the white-hot part of the flame. Later on, these once-lighter looking scenes get warmer, signifying that the plotlines are merging and the drama is coming to a head.
Luke Arnold is a compelling lead: from the start you feel invested in his presence. When Arnold does that thing when an actor frowns while examining a piece of evidence, as if to say “now I’m putting two and two together”, he doesn’t overdo it; it feels genuine. This is a less showy performance than Simon Baker’s heroin-injecting cop in Limbo or Travis Fimmel’s sleepy-eyed detective in Black Snow – perhaps because Arnold is playing a journalist who can’t afford to indulge in too much self-destructive behaviour, with all those bloody deadlines to hit.
But when it comes to dramatic purpose, the journalist and the detective often occupy the same essential role: as upsetters of the apple cart, sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong, making people uncomfortable and creating a chemistry change that draws dormant feelings – and, of course, The Truth – to the surface.
Bella Heathcote, who co-starred in the excellent 2020 horror movie Relic, is very persuasive as Mandy Bond, who has, shall we say, unique knowledge of the late priest. Just by the way she holds herself, by the longing in her eyes, the actor very effectively communicates that Bond wants to be somewhere else, emotionally and physically.
As the aforementioned priest, Swift initially seems a little imposing and Ironman-like for a man of the cloth, as if he should be in a Nutri-Grain commercial rather than a confessional. But stay with it; this tale is tangled and things feel quite plausible (notwithstanding the need for a wee bit of disbelief suspension as it rolls and tumbles along).
Like much of McLean’s work, Scrublands can be a bit pulpy but here not in a bad way: this isn’t trashy or schlocky. It’s a rock-solid addition to the rural noir genre, engaging from the start, all the way to a satisfyingly explosive finale.
Scrublands is streaming now on Stan
