Dazzler Media. Out 10 April

 ‘Oh. My. God!’

Being touted as ‘Tasmania’s answer to Twin Peaks’, this eight-part surprise hit from last year – which just recently boasted an airing on Sky Atlantic – was actually the first adult drama filmed in that Australian state. Needless to say, then, it looks gorgeous – if only for the scenery alone. But there’s more going on than appears in nature out there…

Two girls, step-sisters Anna and Gillian, are cycling through a forest lane when bright lights appear. Gillian investigates and promptly vanishes, giving rise to a whole cult of ‘The Kettering Incident’. Fifteen years later, we catch up with Anna (Elizabeth Debicki), now a doctor in London and suffering from nosebleeds and lapses in time – when we first encounter her she’s passed out in the gutter in the middle of the night, and can’t remember how she got there. Tested for problems with her brain, the next thing she knows she’s in a rental car and has come back to her hometown of Kettering – with no memory of how or why.

Thus begins an intriguing and surrealistic mystery, which takes yet another turn when local girl Chloe Holloway (Sianoa Smit-McPhee) also goes missing in the present day. The only person to have befriended Anna on her return, she’s soon a prime suspect in the case and fingers are still pointing at her for what happened to Gillian. Not even Anna’s dad Roy (Anthony Phelan) seems pleased to see her. Taking it upon herself to uncover the truth, not only about what happened to Chloe but what happened in the past, Anna finds herself at loggerheads with the local police: cops, Detective Brian Dutch (Matthew Le Nevez) and Officer Fergus McFadden (Henry Nixon), making an excellent bickering pair.

During the course of all this we’re introduced to the oddball characters who make up Kettering, including: Gillian’s grief-stricken mum, Renae (Suzi Dougherty); owner of the mill and Chloe’s father, Max (Damien Garvey from Jack Irish); Chloe’s weirdo best friend Eliza (Tilda Cobham-Hervey); and Lofty Sullivan (Nathan Spencer) who was originally arrested after Gillian’s disappearance. But running alongside the mystery aspects are the strange incidents, such as giant moths appearing en masse at windows, more time skips and a pair of army night-vision binoculars that reveal beings who can’t be seen in the light. And just why are so many people dying of cancer in Kettering, what’s going on with the moss that’s appearing everywhere – and why is Anna’s blood ‘changing’? To find out, you’re just going to have to watch and see.

I can understand why people are comparing this to Twin Peaks – the question of what’s happened to Chloe (and Gillian) is up there with ‘who killed Laura Palmer?’ in the watch to the end stakes. But to my mind, Kettering has more in common with European shows such as The Returned and Jordskott – the latter especially given its preoccupation with forests and mythology… not to mention fairy tales. There’s also a healthy dose of X-Files-style paranoia thrown in, the bright lights motif in particular usually reserved for that of UFO encounters. All the actors give great performances, but Debicki especially is convincing as someone who’s not really sure where fantasy ends and reality begins. She drifts through her enquiries like a ghost haunting the town, and in the final scene of the whole series manages to fascinate and chill you to the bone in equal measure.

Kettering moves at a slow pace, but never feels boring – indeed, it only helps to build suspense about what might be going on. This story has more layers than a holidaymaker on an Arctic cruise, revealing them – Lost-style – at its own pace. And you’re grateful for it… If you like TV shows that make you think, as well as go WTF? then you’re in business.

Verdict: The Tawny Frogmouths are not what they seem 9/10  

Paul Kane