Secrets & Lies is Australia’s attempt at a Broadchurch/The Killing style of mystery, self-contained but with a focus on the impact of murder on a community.  I enjoy a good (fictional or historical) murder, and I was intrigued by the Brisbane setting and the fact it was picked up for an American remake before it had even aired.  I am far too Gen Y and cool to watch live-to-air TV, plus my house doesn’t have an aerial, so I hit tenplay.  Which I mention just because I approve of legal streaming television in general, and this was a good service with a nice, crisp stream, so well done, Channel 10.

The official blurb:

Secrets & Lies is a gripping six-part series that tells the story of Ben Gundelach (played by Martin Henderson – The Ring, Little Fish, Bride & Prejudice and Devil’s Knot), an everyday family man who finds the body of a young boy and quickly becomes the prime murder suspect. 

My blurb:

Manpain. No sympathetic adult women.  One person of colour, unsympathetic.  The hero has never read a detective novel ever, and is following the How To Look Totally Suss playbook.

Nevertheless, the mystery is interesting and I like the setting, so I’m probably going to keep watching.  And blogging.

I’m also going to keep on pointing out the incredibly white cast, because WOW, that does not look like Brisbane, even the upper middle-class river-side suburbia part of Brisbane.  It’s just so typical of Australian TV that no one even stops to think about diversity.  And if anyone dares to point it out, they’re accused of racism.

And I really hope the writing of the women pick up, because so far they’re pretty two-dimensional.  Don’t go looking for an Antipodean Sarah Lund here, because all the cops with speaking roles are dudes.

But like I said, the mystery is interesting.  I’m kind of hoping that the hero turns out to be the murderer, but I think we’re too deep inside his head for that sort of twist.  I am, however, going to predict that he’s the dead child’s father.  STAY TUNED.