If the genre of small-town feminist noir comedy murder mystery did not exist previously, then comedy duo Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan have invented it.
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As their latest show launches, The Kates (as they are known) are suddenly dealing with viewers guessing at the identity of the killer stalking their fictional Tasmanian town of Deadloch.
"I sort of forgot that would be part of the conversation," McCartney told AAP.
"Yeah, it's like being a puppet master," said McLennan.
Deadloch is a small town with a big arts festival, and as the bodies pile up (a seal named Kevin is an early suspect) the tensions of gentrification, colonisation and gender drive both plot and comedy.
Senior Sergeant Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) is on a mission to find the killer, but her efforts are undercut by foul-mouthed, tropical shirt-wearing cop Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami), sent from Darwin to oversee the case.
The ensemble cast also includes Nina Oyama, Tom Ballard, Susie Youssef, Alicia Gardiner and Pamela Rabe.
The genre-busting Kates made waves with online cooking show satire The Katering Show and breakfast TV parody Get Krack!n on the ABC.
Deadloch runs to eight one-hour episodes and it's bigger, darker and more dramatic than anything they have made before.
That's a dream come true for McCartney, and with streaming platform Amazon Prime available in 240 countries, Deadloch is launching into a truly international market.
"We wanted to make a show that was epic and large-scale but maintained the idiosyncratic Australian small-town vibe," she said.
There's chicken parma, a footy team, wheelie bins, questionable craft beer and a moody Tasmanian landscape.
International audiences may have to google some of the Aussie lingo, but Deadloch's idiosyncrasies are what make the story special, McLennan said.
"If you remove those things and rub them out, it's just a bit dull and AI generated, there is no personality to it," she said.
For any viewers who feel Deadloch's Feastival is identifiable as Hobart's Dark Mofo, The Kates confirm they have never actually been to the Tasmanian winter arts extravaganza.
But McCartney reveals her experience of an Argentine barbecue in Melbourne was the inspiration for the show's long table (and long-knifed) Beast on the Cross event.
"We sat around and watched this big beast get cooked, so that's all real, but it wasn't hung up on the cross in quite the dramatic fashion that we did in our show," she said.
In inner-city Melbourne on Friday, the Kates took part in a "singing billboard" choir to promote the show, and onlookers wondered if it might become a regular weekly singalong.
Just the sort of thing that might happen in Deadloch.
Australian Associated Press
