TOUGH Chick Bad Cops and Difficult Women in SBS’s Dead Lucky

Women detectives have been titillating and/or terrorising TV audiences since Honey West (Anne Francis) and her sidekick ocelot, Bruce Biteabit, burst onto the small screen in 1965.¹ Since then, female crime-fighters have become decidedly less camp, trading their catsuits and platform shoes for pantsuits and substance abuse. Dark and stormy women sleuths have come to preoccupy the pop-cultural consciousness, particularly in the last few years – think: Jessica Jones’ eponymous PI, as portrayed by Krysten Ritter; The Killing’s homicide detective Sarah Linden, played by Mireille Enos; and The Fall’s detective superintendent Stella Gibson, as realised by TV’s pre-eminent woman cop, Gillian Anderson.

In Australia, female detectives have flashed their badges in recent series such as Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake: China Girl, Rachel Perkins’ television iteration of Mystery Road and, now, SBS’s Dead Lucky. The last of these stars Rachel Griffiths as tempestuous detective sergeant Grace Gibbs. She’s a hot-headed cop searching the mean streets of Sydney for missing student Bo-Lin (Xana Tang) while hell-bent on avenging a colleague murdered by criminal Corey Baxter (Ian Meadows). Written and co-produced by Ellie Beaumont and Drew Proffitt – who previously worked together on House Husbands, the latter having also helped develop and script Cleverman – the four-part crime drama interrogates the time-honoured dichotomy of ‘good cops’ and ‘bad cops’.

Dead Lucky descends on various local crime syndicates, often defined by their constituents’ cultural background, and