Sunday bloody Sunday

Outback noir's smallscreen adaptation has big-screen aspirations.

- RUSSELL BROWN

SCRUBLANDS 

Streaming: The full season is on ThreeNow from December 2

The opening pages of Chris Hammer's debut 2018 crime novel Scrublands could be notes at the top of a film script: everything is described, nothing is internal. "The sky is cloudless and unforgiving, the sun punishing", as parishioners in a small town gather for church. Then the priest emerges with a rifle and calmly executes five men. One shot each.

This is also the first scene of the TV adaptation of Scrublands, which, like Jane Harper's 2016 The Dry, was set in a drought-afflicted expanse of rural Victoria. Harper's debut became a film in 2020 and fellow former reporter Hammer's first novel is the latest outback noir bestseller to get the screen treatment.