Everybody knows that knives spread butter, Kylie Minogue sings catchy songs, and Australian screen detectives return to their small-town homes. This tried-and-tested narrative, where a crime collides with the ghosts of the past, has again been deployed in Dustfall, a six-part crime drama anchored by another very strong and persuasive performance from Anna Torv (so good in The Newsreader) as the flinty-but-fair detective Antigone “Tig” Pollard.
Tig has relocated to the town of North Gap in Queensland when the show begins, living in the house of her recently deceased grandmother – to the chagrin of her mother, Olivia (Juliet Stevenson), who wants it sold – and feeling emotionally drained after a bruising, high-profile rape trial. But when an 18-year-old girl is discovered naked in a local cane field, with very limited recollection of the previous evening, Tig has another disturbing investigation on her hands.
