Dead(loch) Happy

More queer joy! More queer joy! Am I trying to artificially psyche myself up for the holidays? Maybe, you jingle how you want to jingle and I’ll jangle myself over here. Wait, that didn’t sound right. Or did it sound too right? Anyway, I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for the announced second season of “Deadloch.” I can’t even believe we got one season of this deeply weird, funny and lesbian show. Like a second season? In this cursed timeline? Maybe we deserve good things after all. Of course they’re still making us wait for it. The new season won’t start until March 20, 2026 on Prime Video. So that’s still three months away. Plus I’m going to have to find a way to bootleg it because I don’t want to pay even one more penny toward another Bezos mega yacht.

Per the new season description, we’re getting even sweatier mayhem this time. As long as it’s still uber gay, I can’t wait.

“Forget Tassie Noir - Deadloch is entering its Tropical Gothic era. Detectives Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) and Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami) are in Australia’s sweltering Top End, aka the Northern Territory, investigating the death of Eddie’s former policing partner, Bushy. But when the body of a local icon is discovered in a remote town, they are flung into a sweatier, stickier, croc-ier crime case.

Closer to South Asia than to Australia's capital city, our hero town of Barra Creek is a vast departure from Season One’s icy Tasmanian setting. From verdant tropical canopies, red dirt roads that disappear into the horizon, glassy waterways that house 65-million-year-old predators, and sunsets so breathtakingly beautiful that they literally command a standing ovation every night, the Northern Territory’s awe-inspiring landscape and weather shape this season’s look and feel. The heat and humidity are enough to send our detectives into a frenzy, or at least leave them with some horrific chafing.”

Chafing! Tevas! Bad fashion sense on straight women who look gay! A lead actress whose last name is "Box!" Yes, they love us lesbians. They really do. OK, but they could hurry up. Because they finished filming this time last year. Bring on the Dead(loch).

Deadloch-ed Again

Everything, and I mean everything, is pretty grim right now if you live in America (and, truly, the world). So here’s a much needed ray of sunshine/hope for at least some TV joy in our future. Aussie crime comedy “Deadloch” has been renewed for a second season. This news automatically makes me want to rewatch (again) the first season of “Deadloch.” It’s hard to think of a recent show with better, more pointed and hilarious satire both of police work, lesbian culture and small towns.

The second season will reunite our odd couple detective team of Dulcie Collins (played by out queer actress Kate Box) and Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami) for a six episode second season (small quibble, but the first season was 8 episodes so that’s a downgrade). This time, instead of Tasmania, the pair will head to northern Australia to investigate the death of Bushy, Eddie’s former police partner (whose death was alluded to in the first season and one of the reasons for Eddie’s banishment to Deadloch) when “the bodies of two Top End icons are discovered in a remote town, they are flung into a new sweatier, stickier investigation.”

Also returning will be Nina Oyama as young constable Abby "Big Eyes" Matsuda and Alicia Gardiner as Cath, Dulcie’s way overprotective wife. Given that the first season involved a string of dead white men, a lesbian utopian community and a loitering giant seal (which, it turns out, is based on a real-life loitering seal in Tasmania from the Department of You Can’t Make This Shit Up), I am very, very excited to see what absurdist joy the second season will bring.