Australia has been the backdrop of some of our favourite dramas recently, from the mind-boggling marital thriller Lie With Me to the tense murder mystery that unfolds in Riptide. Unsurprisingly, we’ve made a trip back Down Under to unearth a must-see whodunnit: Black Snow. The BBC detective drama is so thrilling you’ll want to binge it in one day.
The series introduces us to Detective James Cormack (Travis Fimmel), who must solve a range of mystifying missing person cases. The drama kicks off with the digging up of a 1994 time capsule that holds the clue to the disappearance of a teenage girl decades prior.
With the series now available to watch on BBC iPlayer, here’s everything you need to know about Black Snow, including the plot, cast and how to watch it.
What is Black Snow about?
This six-part series, which first aired in Australia in 2023, introduces us to Detective James Cormack (Travis Fimmel), who has a knack for solving cold cases. The first series kicks off as a small-town Queensland high school holds a ceremony to open a time capsule buried 20 years earlier in 1994, shortly after the murder of a girl called Isabel (Talijah Blackman-Corowa), which devastated her South Sea Islander community.
Upon opening the capsule, the family and police find cryptic messages in Isabel’s note, leading to them reopening the case – and soon her friends and family are among the suspects.
The second series revolves around the case of a girl called Zoe Jacobs who went missing on her 21st birthday in 2003 – then police officer Sam Kahlil discovers her backpack and everything changes. Simultaneously, Detective Cormack desperately searches for his brother, who vanished when they were children.
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Who’s in the cast of Black Snow?
The cast of Black Snow includes:
- Travis Fimmel (Vikings) as Detective James Cormack
- Renee Lim (Five Blind Dates) as Senior Sergeant Angie Zhang
- George Mason (Daffodils) as Ritchie Cormack
- Jemmason Power (Hargar’s Hut) as Hazel Baker
- Rose Riley (Mr Inbetween) as Jade
- Megan Smart (Class of ’07) as Samara Kahlil
- Gulliver McGrath (Significant Others) as Constable Dale Quinn
- Talijah Blackman-Corowa (Deadloch) as Isabel Baker
- Jana McKinnon (Bad Behaviour) as Zoe Jacobs
Is Black Snow any good?
Yes – if you love a twisty detective drama with a rich contextual and geographical backdrop, you’re going to love Black Snow. The show’s creator, Lucas Taylor, was inspired by the true atrocities South Sea Islanders faced in the colonial era, when they were kidnapped to harvest sugarcane. As well as the fascinating context, the backdrop to the riveting mystery is simply stunning!
Is there a trailer for Black Snow?
Yes – you can watch the trailer for Black Snow here.
How can I watch Black Snow?
You can watch Black Snow now on BBC iPlayer.
What other detective dramas can I watch now?
Want to travel elsewhere for a chilling mystery? We’d point you towards From Darkness, where we meet Claire Church (Anne-Marie Duff), a former police officer who relocates from Manchester to the Western Isles for a fresh start, until bodies linked to an old case on her former patch are uncovered. You can watch From Darkness now on U. For another thrilling ‘Western-noir’-style mystery, we’d point you towards Dark Winds, where we meet a crime-fighting trio, led by Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), based in the US region of Navajo in the early 70s, where they crack an assortment of chilling cases. You can watch Dark Winds now on Netflix.
