Source : the age
The Killings at Parrish Station ★★★★
The Killings at Parrish Station is impeccable, ambitious Australian television – a six-part series with an unnerving, cosmic take on the classic outback mystery. Propelled by a razor-sharp script filled with tension, terror, humour and a dash of existential pondering (think Midnight Mass or True Detective, with fewer philosophical monologues), the series follows Detective Georgia Cooke, a woman haunted for 34 years by an unsolved massacre in the desert.
Led by Mia Wasikowska and Heather Mitchell as younger and older versions of Cooke, the series jumps between two timelines, beginning with the 1987 massacre of four scientists at Parrish Station, an isolated research post in the Australian desert (unnamed, but filmed in Broken Hill).
The murders are cruel and ritualistic, with all but one of the teeth removed from a victim; another’s organs were removed while still alive, while several stone cairns are found nearby.
It’s a few days past Christmas when Cooke (Wasikowska) and her partner Michael Thorne (Xavier Samuel) arrive via helicopter, their white collared shirts immediately sticking to them in the heat. “How does anyone survive out here?” asks Thorne. “You don’t,” replies Cooke.
But they aren’t the grizzled duo swapping quips for long, and are soon at odds as Cooke explores leads that point towards a mysterious 15th-century book, while Thorne’s shadowy past sends him down a different path.
Fast-forward to 2024, and we meet Cooke (Mitchell) again, but this time in an institution, where she has lived ever since the investigation’s traumatising end. She is released by her former mentee (Doris Youane) to investigate copycat killings that have begun to surface.
Before we meet Mitchell-as-Cooke, however, Parrish Station enters the 21st century with a live true-crime podcast, cutting between timelines from a fresh outback crime scene to a city crowd lapping up lines such as: “That’s not where teeth medically go!”
These scenes could put many viewers offside, but they work, immediately deflating all tension. If anything, they set up how delightfully disorienting Parrish Station makes its time jumps, which are immediately visually recognisable but often tonally isolating.
A remarkable first show from TV writer Ben Jenkins (The Chaser; SBS’s The Feed), Parrish Station’s well-drawn world is brought to life by a talented crew – including composer Michael Yezerski, whose ominous score makes radio fuzz a sign of horror – and a stacked cast.
It’s particularly remarkable to have Wasikowska and Mitchell, two greats at showing rage behind a poised surface, play Cooke – a character who can’t let injustice go, even as she knows the pursuit will hurt her most of all.
Why four stars, not five? Like most mysteries, not all its answers can match the eerie magnitude of its questions. Such is life.
The Killings at Parrish Station streams on Stan (which is owned by Nine, publisher of this masthead) from June 24.
