The Silence
Not often is Australian television drama anything as mystifying
as this piece from producer Jan Chapman and director Cate
Shortland, now returning to the ABC. The Silence is a
multi-layered tale of fictional 1960 crimes in East Sydney that
become inextricably entwined in a detective’s attempt at
rehabilitation after freezing on the job.
Senior Detective Richard Treloar (Richard Roxburgh), traumatised
by being unable to draw his gun to prevent the murder of a police
informant, has been relieved of his duties.
To the sneers of fellow officers, he is posted to a desk job at the
Police and Justice Museum and instructed to organise an exhibition
of 1960 crime scenes.
His humiliation is made complete by having to regularly report
to Juliet (Essie Davis), a police psychiatrist and to see his
relationship with Helen (Alice McConnell) dissolve while her own
career as a detective blossoms.
The task of poring over dozens of old photographs with his
cheeky assistant, Evelyn (Emily Barclay), soon becomes an obsession
when the pair of them spot the same woman appearing in the
background of many photographs. Who was she? Treloar finds himself
investigating one of the most puzzling mysteries of his career.
Writers Mary Walsh, a former Police Museum employee, and Alice
Addison, have woven their story around a set of imagined
black-and-white pictures, superbly created by ABC stills
photographer Matt Nettheim. He used 50 extras to create realistic
period scenes involving bullet-ridden bodies and the gawking
spectators drawn to the scene.
