Tasmanian Noir to Light Up Lightbox

Lightbox will stream one of the year’s most anticipated Australian drama series from July 4 — the same day it airs on pay-TV service Foxtel. 

The Kettering Incident stars Elizabeth Debicki (The Night Manager, Everest) as a doctor who finds herself inexplicably linked to the cases of two girls who mysteriously disappeared 15 years apart in identical circumstances in the Tasmanian wilderness.

According to The Guardian, “Kettering, which won the prestigious Series Mania award when it premiered in Paris in April, is 21st century Tasmanian gothic par excellence.”

The newspaper said the eight-part series “weaves a meditative spell on the viewer as it explores the supernatural implications of the disappearances …

“The first two episodes unfold at a languid pace; we don’t know much of what’s going on, and only piece together shards of the mystery as Anna does.

“This will likely be intoxicating for some viewers and frustrating for others; its pacing has more in common with ‘Scandi-noir’ than the HBO model of golden-age ‘event television’.”

Another Aussie critic who previewed the first two hours thought it a “darkly beautiful” and “tantalisingly impenetrable mystery that kicks off with oodles of flair and bravado“.

And Variety reported its world premiere in Paris “quickly drew good word of mouth, compared favourably by one US exec to the Australian breakout hit Top of the Lake“.

Of course, Jane Campion shot that series here — ironically, the country where Vicki Madden (The Bill, Water Rats) told co-creator Vincent Sheehan (The Hunter) she didn’t want to set her next project.

“I said, ‘Look, I don’t want to do a New Zealand show where it’s all beautiful snow-capped mountains.’

“For me, Tasmania is all about gothic. It has a very, very dark history, and you feel the history. I wanted to tell that story, because that was my Tasmania, and it just happened to be what Vincent was looking for.”