If you like your femmes funny as well as fatales...
...and your murders not merely gory but entertaining too then come right this way!
The absolute state of the world means we remain even more in need of distraction, entertainment and a good laugh. I got watching a show earlier this week which ticked a lot of my boxes: a few grisly murders set within the comforting context of different kinds of humour. There was some slapstick, some gross-out & some more subtle, but at the end of the day, there’s a killer on the loose! Humour and murdery vibes are very much my wheelhouse so I thought I’d share this somewhat unsung gem and a few other stories along the same lines.
By the way, if any of you ladies out there ever thought you had a book or perhaps even a script in you, you could do worse than creating something in the dark comedy genre, because I’ll tell you this much for nothing: it’s sadly lacking in terms of work from women. It’s not like there’s nothing - but there’s not a huge amount to pick from. What I describe below though is very entertaining, & hopefully not all of them are painfully obvious, this week we are all about women and crime: in most cases, out & out murder, but in a funny way! So here goes…
TL;DR
Watch Deadloch; listen to Drunk Women Solving Crime; watch Heathers and Drop Dead Gorgeous; and read My Sister, The Serial Killer.
WATCH
It was discovering the Antipodean delight, Deadloch, that gave me the theme for this week’s newsletter.
Set in a newly-diverse Tasmanian small town (quite a few lesbians, & some of the townsfolk ain’t happy about their arrival), it opens with a pair of pissed-up young wans (literally) stumbling upon a very dead, very naked man; their different reactions at the discovery set the scene for what continues to be a delightfully comic approach to the macabre. (Warning: there is a flaccid penis on screen before the title appears)
Cue the arrival of Dulcie, our straight-laced police officer protagonist, who, as Senior Sergeant of the local force, knows enough about her own place in the ranks to know that the police commissioner on mainland Australia will want ‘real’ police to investigate. So she is lumbered with Detective Eddie Redcliffe from Darwin to do the ‘proper policing’. Redcliffe proves to be a pain in Dulcie’s proverbial (& also, tbqh, a bit too much of an over-the-top Aussie stereotype to be entirely tolerable.) The pair clash over methods and suspects: and lo, we have ourselves a gun show. Sorry, I mean murder show.
LISTEN
Drunk Women Solving Crime does what it says on the tin. Since 2018, hosts Taylor Glenn and Hannah George have been solving crimes with guests ranging from Katherine Ryan & Maisie Adam to Clive Anderson & Scroobius Pip. Their discussion includes crimes their guests been victim to (Ryan was catfished) as well as attempting to solve cold cases (Anderson is put to work figuring out what happened to Shropshire woman Sarah Duckett who vanished in May 1874)
The chat gets gigglier the longer it goes on, one would assume due to the booze consumed but also as the guests warm up and find their natural place within Glenn & George’s dynamic. The live shows are particularly fun to listen to.
WATCH
Time for the usual classic title that you’ll have all heard of but perhaps feel it’s time to revisit, ladies & gentlemen, it’s Heathers.
In a truly realistic plot, high school boyfriend & girlfriend J.D. & Veronica (Christian Slater & Winona Ryder in their 1980s heyday) plan to kill their fellow students, making them look like suicide. Whilst Veronica is ‘only’ doing it to get back at certain kids who screw her over, it transpires that J.D. is eh, a psychopath..? (What is about people called J.D., eh?) This absolute classic is as wonderfully over the top and manic as most teenagers whilst also kitsch. It’s a shame that high school students really are at such risk from their classmates nowadays, but hey, isn’t great they all have access to assault weapons?!
In yet another incredibly true-to-life storyline, Drop Dead Gorgeous centres on the world of beauty pageants in small-town Minnesota. The cast in this one is stellar: Kirsten Dunst, Ellen Barkin, Denise Richards, Amy Adams and Allison Janney are all fantastic. And my favourite part? The accents.
Shot as a mockumetary, all the high school girls competing and their moms are interviewed as they prepare to compete in a qualifying contest for the national Sarah Rose Cosmetics American Teen Princess Pageant. But as the big day draws near; one contestant dies in a freak accident, as does the boyfriend of another, one of mom’s trailers explodes… what could be happening?!
READ
My Sister The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite is hardly a hidden gem. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019 and won Crime & Thriller Book of the Year at the 2020 British Book Awards.
Set in Lagos, Nigeria, Korede is a nurse whose little sister Ayoola has a little bit of a problem: she can’t stop stabbing her boyfriends to death (in what she calls self-defence). Korede does as anyone would (!) & assists her sister in disposing of the bodies and keeping her mouth shut. Ayoola has just seen off the third guy in a row when she meets Korede’s work crush Tade. So of course, he winds up with a massive crush on her & it falls to Korede to prevent Tade from meeting the same fate as her sister’s previous paramours whilst also convincing him that it’s her he should fall for.