![]() Like, so massively above that not one villain whose path he stumbles into even comes close to taking him seriously, in spite of the fact that, by the end of the first movie, his ability to trip into bigger takedowns than the whole of the Melbourne PD is already the stuff of public record. As hapless as he is driven to rout out smug corruption at any cost, Pearce’s Irish is constantly bumbling into criminal schemes massively above his pay grade-and I mean massively above. Featuring Guy Pearce as the titular Irish, an ex-lawyer turned sort-of PI (not to mention amateur woodworker and part-time race horse wrangler) in the wake of his wife’s senseless murder, the ABC TV adaptation of Jack Irish is, as that parenthetical just above might suggest, as densely packed as a crime drama can get without tipping into absurdity. So rest assured that no matter what title you decide to start with below, you’ll find gold star performances across the board.Īdapted from Peter Temple’s beloved series of the same name, Jack Irish technically comprises three TV movies and three more traditional (if traditionally short) TV “series,” the last of which bowed in 2021. That said, limited in diameter as that pool may be, it runs deep. ( Total Control isn’t included on this particular list, but is well worth checking out.) There might be some self-selection at play here-like, Pedersen and Mailman are both so arresting, I’ll happily seek out any new project they put their names to-but also, Australia is an island as much as Britain is. Aaron Pedersen and Debroah Mailman in both Jack Irish and Mystery Road-and, while we’re at it, crime-adjacent political thriller Total Control, which also stars Dead Lucky’s Rachel Griffiths. ![]() Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries and Mystery Road. ![]() Yoson An, for example, shows up in both Dead Lucky and New Gold Mountain. Now, one other thing you’ll likely notice right away: there’s a lot of cast crossover between these series. Similarly, you won’t find Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries anywhere below-if you haven’t trusted CrimeReads enough to have watched that by now, me recommending it again for the dozenth time is likely to do much to move the needle. On that note, you will NOT find anything from streaming’s heaviest hitters Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, HBO Max-whatever they’ve got, we trust you to find. Now, as for what you will (and will not) find on this list: You WILL find a lot of titles from Acorn TV and Sundance Now-though primarily the home to all things British (Acorn) and all things indie (Sundance), both also make it a higher priority to secure the rights for the most interesting Australian titles out there than pretty much any other streaming service around. It’s like a funhouse mirror: the greater the distortion, the easier it is to see the true shape lying underneath. But more than that, between the country’s vault of stellar actors and the violent, all-too-familiar consequences its colonialist, anti-Black history has left it with, the crime stories that creative wealth has set about telling are likely to be much more legible to American viewers than those from other (European) English-speaking countries might be. Why Australian? Well, the creative wealth is just there, for one. On the subject of random Australian crime dramas, we’ve curated this short list of six of the best currently (or soon) available to American audiences. And what’s more, with streaming making it possible for, say, a random Australian crime drama to reach as far as any of its Hollywood counterparts, the quality of the titles on offer is improving all the time. Gone are the days of having to hope your local indie video store might carry an ancient copy of Poirot or Midsomer Murders today you can just navigate over to the Search bar of your streaming dock of choice and queue up pretty much any international title you can think of. ![]() Between the advent of streaming as a basic service and the slightly more recent establishment of niche platforms like Sundance Now and Acorn TV (both subsidiaries of AMC Networks), the opportunity to watch all kinds of TV from all over the globe has grown exponentially in a relatively short span of time.
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