Here is an Australian crime mystery thriller series to stand alongside "Morse" (and "Endeavour" and "Lewis", also), "Inspector Frost", "Vera", "Inspector Lynley Mysteries", "D.C.I Banks", "Shetland", "Foyle's War", "Midsomer Murders", "Colombo", "Jesse Stone", "Wallender", "Poirot", "Miss Marple", "Silent Witness", "Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries",
you get the picture. Jane Halifax is a Forensic Psychiatrist, often working for lawyers (attorneys) or their client, or as a psychological profiler or police. She is an expert, highly professional, beautiful, single, and complicated. (Brilliantly acted by Rebecca Gibney). The series is created by one of Australia's great television series and mini-series production team, Simpson, LeMesurier, and others. The script writers and directors are some of Australia's best. The cast, varying across successive episodes, but with plausible sequential life-story development centred (naturally) around Jane Halifax (Rebecca Gibney), includes a pantheon of the best Australian film and television actors, such as Hugh Jackman, Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce, Robyn Nevin, Steve Bisley, Colin Friels, Ben Mendelson, Gary McDonald, Essie Davis, William McInnes, Sophie Lee, Deborah Lee-Furness, Bruce Spence, Richard Roxburgh, Frankie J. Holden, Kerry Armstrong, Brett Climo, Damian Walshe-Howling, Lewis Fiander, Vince Colosimo, Angela Punch McGregor, Asher Keddie, Marta Dusseldorp, Michael Veitch, Rhada Mitchell, Alan Hopgood,
The stories are strong, and well-written. Through each episode we meet the new team Jane Halifax is working with, and the investigation, and possible suspects. The mystery, and drama develops slowly, but with increasing tension as red herrings are progressively dismissed, and the target criminal eventually comes into view,
leading to a rapid, dramatically striking climax, and the a finale, sometimes ambiguous, sometimes consolatory. Each episode was given a substantial budget, and the stories are colourfully set in and around Melbourne, the state-capital of Victoria, in the south of Australia. The cinematography is flawless. The sets and landscapes are vividly convincing. Mood music sets off characters and developing events and tension. Narrative themes include undiscovered twin brother, serial rapist, psychologically damaged serial sex-murderer, psychopathic mass murderer, suicide of a parent,
From 1994 to 2002, twenty-one episodes of 90 or 102 minutes were produced – clearly a substantial body of work! Halifax F.P. is a classic series that deserves to be much better known. John Gough – Deakin University (retired
