For critics such as myself, it is de rigueur – in fact downright obligatory – to grumble about the glut of sequels and spin-offs constantly clogging up our screens. But I’ll always have time for new adventures featuring Akubra-wearing outback sleuth Jay Swan.
The protagonist of the Mystery Road franchise was first played by Aaron Pedersen and now, in the “Origin” prequel iterations, is played by Mark Coles Smith, filling some very big cowboy boots but feeling totally embodied in the role. It’s as though he has always been Jay Swan – the highest of compliments, given that Pedersen’s performances once felt inimitable.
The Mystery Road franchise now has two movies and four TV seasons. The second season of Origin was directed by Wayne Blair and Jub Clerc, and again focuses on Swan’s younger years as a cop, although there isn’t a big difference personality-wise between Swan in this series and the character in the first Mystery Road movie (even age-wise the distinction feels slight; Smith is now 38, while Pedersen was in his early 40s in the original film).
The bad news is that Origin’s second season is the most formulaic of Swan’s outings to date. The good news is that the overall standard of Mystery Road remains so strong that even a weaker entry is still engaging viewing.
Of course we start with a new case in another secret-ridden small town – Loch Iris – that’s populated by locals who don’t much like the cut of Swan’s jib. Robyn Malcolm, who was devastatingly great in the New Zealand series After the Party, is for this season what Judy Davis was for the first: an injection of a gravitas from a high-impact veteran, playing a hardened cop who has a rocky relationship with Swan.
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The first scene between Malcolm and Smith takes place in a pub, where Malcolm’s character, Sergeant Paula “Simmo” Simmons, delivers an expository dialogue chunk recapping important character information. Swan is “that blackfella cop who had the speedy rise up through the ranks” and “got your last boss locked up”; he responds by saying he’d “do it again if I had to” – reiterating his status as an agent of change, upending the status quo to right old wrongs.
Some of Malcolm’s lines feel a little hackneyed, given we’ve heard several iterations of them before – such as her declaration that “we do things differently here” because the town “looks after itself”. Which is obviously true if, by “looks after itself”, she means accommodating an escalating series of crimes and a growing number of dead bodies.
But it’s not just Malcolm’s character: many lines feel a little too stagey, a little too written. “It can take a lifetime to figure out the difference between good intentions and doing what’s right,” one character says; “You don’t know what you’re messing with, detective,” says another.
It’s clear from the opening episode (this review encompasses all six) that the case will have something to do with a young Aboriginal boy called Swayze (Aswan Reid, the star of Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy), who is introduced in the first episode driving away in a hurry. The plot thickens when a young child in foster care goes missing and a dead body is discovered – like so many television corpses – right at the end of the first episode. Key supporting characters include Swan’s partner, Mary Allen (Tuuli Narkle), and brother, Sputty (Clarence Ryan).
Kinks in the writing notwithstanding, Origin season two is classily executed, with an earthy scaled-back colour scheme and visual staging that allows scenes to breathe, maximising the actors’ presence. Despite the screenplay feeling more cookie-cut than ever, the writers succeed in creating an unsettling atmosphere; Origin is ripe with the sense that the past can have a terrible effect on the present, clinging to it like a rash.
Here’s hoping the next Mystery Road outing – if there is one – will take some risks and reinvigorate the series.