Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Gloaming’ On Starz, Where A Troubled Cop And An Estranged Friend Reunite To Solve A Murder

When someone notices that a show is visually dark, almost too dark to see anyone, then you know you’re watching some good noir. But dark and gloomy skies aren’t the only thing that makes for good noir. You need interesting characters, and a mystery that’s intriguing without being confusing. A new Australian series, The Gloaming, takes place on the island of Tasmania, and it’s got a lot going on.

THE GLOAMING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A desaturated shot of rolling hills, then two teenagers walking through the woods. “July 11, 1999. Highland Lakes. Tasmania.”

The Gist: The two teens, Jenny McGinty (Milly Alcock) and Alex O’Connell (Finn Ireland) approach an old house that she’s heard about. In front of the creepy house is a graveyard. The two of them get separated, and when Jenny finds Alex, she finds a mysterious man pointing a rifle at him. She gets shot and killed instead.

In the present day, Molly McGee (Emma Booth), a detective for the Hobart police, is staking out a mansion in her vintage Chrysler. When he leaves, she breaks in but doesn’t take anything except a chess piece; she just turns some things around on his desk to let him know that someone was there. She gets a call from Daisy Hart (Markella Kavenagh), a foster kid she’s been helping, but she ignores it.

Daisy is troubled because she just participated in the murder of a woman; her boyfriend Freddie Hopkins (Matt Testro) strangled the woman and Daisy shot it on a phone. She thinks they’ll be caught, and she demands that they bury the body somewhere.

The next day, Molly arrives at a grisly scene at the bottom of a waterfall, a body, wrapped in barbed wire. On the body is the ID card of Jenny McGinty in her possession. Ritualized murders like that don’t happen around Hobart very often, so a call is put in to the police in Melbourne, and a now-middle-aged Alex O’Connell (Ewen Leslie) is sent to his hometown to help. He doesn’t want to go, given his horrible memories of home, but he’s sent anyway. When he gets to the crime scene, he and Molly recognize each other straight away, and the history between the two is readily apparent to Molly’s boss, Lewis Grimshaw (Aaron Pederson).

There’s a connection between the woman who was found murdered and the dancing academy where Molly’s daughter, Lily Broomhall (Josephine Blazier) goes. And there’s a connection between Lily, a teenage cam girl, and Freddie, as well. All of them are haunted by “gloamings,” ghosts of the past that pop up at random times.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The dank atmosphere reminds us of The Killing and Top Of The Lake, mixed with Twin Peaks.

Our Take: The Gloaming has a lot of atmosphere, and a lot of people staring into middle distance. The series, created by Victoria Madden, relies a lot on looks and actions to get the point across, which can work in some cases. Here, it makes for a first episode that moves along at a snail’s pace, while not giving us a ton of information about the people we’re watching.

We know Molly McGee has issues, as she keeps stalking this businessman named Gareth McAvaney (Martin Henderson), who’s romancing a city council member, Jacinta Clunes (Nicole Chamoun), who’s running for mayor. Her relationship with her daughter is spotty at best; Lilly thinks she’s more interested in helping Daisy than her. She tests her memory by putting things on a tray then covering them and writing down what she saw. So she’s a character. We don’t know what her damage is yet or her connection to Alex, who is so stressed about being home his hands shake.

We’re just not sure how all of this interconnectedness, along with these “Gloamings” that haunt these people, are connected to Jenny or the woman who was killed by the creepy Freddie, serves the story. There is also people from The Star Of The Forest Church, who are associated with the dead woman. There just feels like a ton of loose ends that will be hard for Madden and her writing staff to tie up in a satisfying way.

What we’re most intrigued with is the story between Molly and Alex, and how they deal with being thrust together after 20 years to work on this case. There had to have been something romantic and painful between them to make them seem so uncomfortable with each other. Did it have to do with Jenny’s death? That’s the part of this story that will keep us watching. The rest of it feels like distractions.

Sex and Skin: Besides Lily doing her cam girl thing while Freddie clicks and watches, which is gross enough as it is, there’s nothing.

Parting Shot: One of the gloamings haunts Freddie as he watches Lily. Molly also hears a noise and investigates a cabin in the rear of her house. She turns on the light to see a shocking scene.

Sleeper Star: We’ve seen Aaron Pederson’s brooding presence in enough Australian dramas to know that he’s not there just to spew lines like “You know each other?” He’ll factor into this case in some way.

Most Pilot-y Line: That old Chrysler Molly drives feels like it’s just there as an affectation. It did fascinate us because it had a right-hand drive, as if it was made for the Australian market (Chrysler has an Australian division, so it was), but it’s also there to break tension. When Alex gets out of the car and closes the door, for instance, Molly yells, “You have to slam it!” Is there a reason why she’s holding on to this car or is it just there for show?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite not having confidence that the show can services all the stories it’s set up, The Gloaming definitely has a sense of place, and we’re so curious about the relationship between the two main characters, we’ll keep watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Gloaming On Starz