Review by C.J. Bunce
To begin with the tiny town of Bidgeegud in Western Australia only had a population of 12. That was until the local chap who ran guided UFO tours died. Population 11 is the result, a quirky comedy and mystery from Australia that is also about a podcast, and it’s now streaming on Prime Video. Although it’s nothing at all like Only Murders in the Building or Bodkin, it’s surprisingly strong, especially at twelve half-hour episodes. It stars Ben Feldman (Cloverfield, Friday the 13th, Medium) as Andy Pruden, a bank teller from Ohio who ends up in Australia looking for his dad for money after he bungles a money laundering scheme.
Deadloch, Troppo, Harrow, Mystery Road, Glitch, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Gloaming, The Clearing, and The Tourist–so where does Population 11 land among the better recent genre series from Australia?
The series is a reminder that Australia knows quirky, especially quirky small-town characters like in Deadloch, Troppo, Mystery Road, The Tourist, and Glitch. But so does the U.S., and you’d put the denizens of Bidgeegud up there with the people in Resident Alien, Ghosts, Northern Exposure, Longmire, Dark Winds, and Lodge 49. Jimmy (Tony Briggs) is a sort-of priest who works at the pub, run by Val (Genevieve Lemon). Cedric (William Zappa) is a mysterious German expatriate who hangs out there. Noel (Stephen Curry) runs the general store and post office and has a pet crocodile named Jeff. Trevor (Steve Le Marquand) and Maureen Taylor (Pippa Grandison) are a clueless couple that just seem to live there. Audrey (Emily Taheny) runs the old Chinese restaurant as a pie shop (with pies made from roadkill) that she inherited from the mother of Charmaine Ling (Fiona Choi) and Shoshanna Ling (Karis Oka). Shoshanna dresses up like an alien for Hugo and shoots people with an air gun. Audrey is pursued by the gross Leon (Rick Donald) who is a paranoid dopehead in a criminal partnership with Gareth (Chai Hansen).
Hugo, played by Harrow co-star Darren Gilshehan in several episodes of flashbacks, was trying to bring in business to the town by running a UFO tour business. So what happened to him, who killed him, what did he do with his son’s $250,000, and how did he end up dead in his car? That’s the mystery Cassie (Perry Mooney) is trying to piece together for her true crime podcast. But the local cop Sgt. Walters (Katrina Milosevic) doesn’t trust anyone and is watching closely, when she’s not trying to seduce all the males in town. That’s somehow supposed to add up to 12 residents, minus the dead Hugo. The math never seems to work, but that’s not really important.
But even with twelve or eleven key characters, six first-season hours only provide time to get to know a few well, so Andy and Cassie drive the story. Andy gets bitten by termites, knocked unconscious by a shovel, almost eaten by Jeff, thinks Audrey made his dad into pies, and is pursued by a vengeful hitman. Cassie is at first along just to get a reward from Andy for finding his dad, later using Andy to have a subject for her podcast, but eventually Andy and Cassie grow to like each other more.
Based on true events, but only loosely, what makes the show worth coming back to is showrunner Phil Lloyd’s success at leaning into everyone’s oddities. Like an Agatha Christie mystery, everyone is a suspect. Feldman and Mooney are strong, charismatic leads, and Gilshenan and Curry provide the best quirky character subplots. The comedy takes over as the body count starts to climb, yet the mystery elements are good, too.
It’s worth a second season, yet the first season ties up all the loose ends in the event it is not renewed. From the Stan network in Australia, catch Population 11 now streaming on Prime Video.
