Deep Water

It's Australia Day. Police detectives Tori Lustigman and Nick Manning are assigned the murder of Haris Rexhaj in his Bondi beach condo. He's a young gay Muslim. Tori suspects the homophobic neighbor but her superior directs them to the gay lover Rohan Assad. Rohan fears being deported to Iran. Further investigation uncovers a possible serial killer targeting homosexuals using a gay dating app. Tori is a single mom and new to the force from Goulburn. She is still haunted by a childhood incident with her gay brother.

This is a functional crime drama. There is a bit of ripped-from-the-headlines flavor. It does need a few more ingredients to extend this drama into a compelling 4 hour watch. Tori's childhood incident could have been heightened by doing a flashback. Her recollection of the incident is probably an emotional high point. The other part that needs expanding is the villain of the piece. It needs to make the supervisor a bigger character and more culpable. The story needs more drama and a bit more flavoring.

A solidly okay series, the storyline was interesting if not a bit drawn out. The first two episodes introduced a lot of characters which made it hard to keep track of events. The last two episodes wrapped up nicely, but could have been shorter. Overall good cinematography and decent acting. Characters didn't have much depth.

I suppose my title is as much a comment on me as the show. Only four episodes long, this series is confusing with multiple similar characters and intertwining subplots. Maybe this just an accurate reflection of true cop cases - many shades of gray and inferential evidence with few clearcut leads - but it doesn't make for good viewing. Maybe it's just my Pooh-brain too dithered to keep track of them all, but not for lack of experience.

It is natural that Australia, having lengthy (dependent) ties with the UK, aspires to imitate/repeat the latter's success in the field of crime thrillers, stocking it with local nature and habits, sometimes without having any influence to the course of events or effect on scenes. A lot of is also visible in Deep Water where tautness and smoothness are overshadowed by personal issues with references to the past and leisure activities on the beach.

Well, the beginning is intriguing, but the motives and many suspects are revealed too soon, the characters are somewhat arid, the police has seemingly no ranking order in place, and the background of the principal wrongdoer is too trivial and vague for the offences he committed. So the 4 episodes a' 50 minutes are too long and hectic; moreover, I was not pleased with the final events and events leading up to them. In the wide world of English-speaking crime drama series, Deep Water is hardly the one to be classified as "must-watch".

This show was pretty good. The plot was complex enough. Some things to distract you. If you like mystery detective shows this one is pretty good. Based in Australia this adds to some interest. Just a different location. The stars are very good. They dig deep into some cultural problems of the past that ends up driving them to the end of the story. I found that part the most interesting.