You’ll be enthralled, you’ll be gutted. This five-star drama is one of the ABC’s finest

Dustfall ★★★★★At a glance, this new Australian drama feels familiar: a horrifying crime against a young woman occurs in a small town, with the investigation being led by an on-edge police detective who has returned to the community where they grew up. But once you experience Dustfall – and it’s a series you experience on a visceral level – any sense of the archetypal is banished.Anna Torv stars in new ABC series Dustfall.There is an unflinching level of detail, the story’s procedural momentum is matched by harsh, necessary themes, and the performances – beginning with Anna Torv’s wrenching headline role as Detective Sergeant Antigone “Tig” Pollard – have a raw-nerve specificity. The praise for this show, which should be ranked among the finest the ABC has produced, comes not just with superlatives, but an acknowledgment of the responsibility displayed: to not turn away, to not offer easy reassurance. You’ll be enthralled, you’ll be gutted.When we first see Edie Kelly (Zoe Phillips), the 18-year-old high school student is nervously letting down her friend and hopeful suitor Finn Morrison (Theo Haitana) in the front bar of the Royal, a pub in the Queensland town of North Gap. Annoyed, he walks out. Then the barflies circle Edie. The next morning she’s found sitting naked in a cane field, bloodied, bruised and without a memory of what transpired. Edie’s been drugged and raped.Take note of how Tig encounters Edie, because this is storytelling where the granular touches are both heartbreaking and telling. There is tender empathy in Tig’s voice, which also has a note of resignation that another young woman has had her life brutally upended, and a shot – one of many rightfully unyielding compositions from director Emma Freeman – that starts at Edie’s face and tracks down to her hands clenching her ankles as if she’s trying to literally hold herself together.Dustfall was adapted from The Unbelieved, a 2022 crime novel written by Vikki Petraitis. The six-part series was created by Dianne Taylor, the New Zealand writer behind After the Party, a startling Kiwi drama about assumption and recrimination. Dustfall has a more recognisable genre outline, but there’s a similarity in the emotional charge that never dissipates. It explores how the everyday can be fraught and how truths get ignored because acknowledging them pulls away necessary foundations.Zoe Phillips as Edie Kelly with Kate Box, who plays Edie’s mother, Fiona, in Dustfall.ABCEven as a procedural, where the police work is incremental, this show doesn’t cut the usual corners. There is a long sequence in the first episode in which Edie undergoes a forensic exam with Shayna (Alice Ansara), a nurse who must gather crucial evidence at a terrible time. The distance, made by bitter circumstance and impersonal laws, between those who need help and those trying to help them is a recurring element. Nothing comes easily, be it answers, healing or change for the better.The show doesn’t sideline Edie – she’s never just “the victim”. And at each junction, threads are woven in – whether it’s Tig being visited by her mother, Olivia (Juliet Stevenson), a gender studies professor whose coercive charm can’t bridge the unspoken chasm with her daughter, or awkwardly encountering Andy (Peter Fenton), an older musician she had a crush on as a teenager. You see the lives of suspects, foundering relationships and official intransigence. The economy and effect lodged in the narrative is masterful.What it all coheres as is a view, taken from both intimate and official levels, of the realities behind sexual assault and a culture where it takes root. There’s the push and pull of differing attitudes, the shortfall of flawed prosecutions. Many of the women in Dustfall, including Tig, are aware of the repercussions in even minor encounters; some of the men are oblivious to them. Whatever the elements, each is complementary. Dustfall is immense.Dustfall premieres at 8.20pm Sunday, October 11, on the ABC and ABC iview.Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) or the Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491.Want more TV? We’ve got you.Newsletter: Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.Movie guide: More than 200 hand-picked hits from all the major streamers.October streaming picks: A guide to the best new shows this month.Carrie is back: Stephen King didn’t want another remake. This is what convinced him.East of Eden review: Is the new Netflix adaptation worth watching?70 Up: TV’s most fascinating experiment comes to an end.Watch: Binged The Airport Chaplain? Meet the man who inspired the show.Craig Mathieson is a TV, film and music writer for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X.From our partners