Green Guide: ‘Michael Dorman needed to take a risk. He found the answer in the outback’

The Age, Louise Rugendyke, Thursday 9th July, 2026

‘Adapted from Chris Hammer’s bestseller, Treasure and Dirt proves murder mysteries, done the Australian way, are in rude health.’

‘Adapted from Chris Hammer’s bestseller, Treasure and Dirt proves murder mysteries, done the Australian way, are in rude health.’

There’s a body waiting at the bottom of an outback mine shaft for Detective Ivan Lucic.

“Why me?” he asks the unknown voice on the other end of the phone.

“You need a tan,” comes the deadpan reply.

And so begins Treasure and Dirt, the six-part ABC drama adapted from Chris Hammer’s bestselling crime novel, set in the fictional opal mining town of Nulla, where, of course, nothing is as it seems.

If that sounds hokey, it’s really not. And when you consider it follows hot on the heels of The Killings at Parrish Station, another local drama that gives the staid crime genre a solid kick in the shins, it proves murder mysteries, done the Australian way, are in rude health.

Just as The Killings at Parrish Station is held together by a terrific pair of twin performances from Mia Wasikowska and Heather Mitchell, Treasure and Dirt is centred on Michael Dorman as Lucic, a tightly wound detective who wears his suit as armour, and local rookie detective Nell Buchanan, played by Liv Hewson. In true genre fashion, they are both trying to outrun their past, but it’s more Wake in Fright than Midsomer Murders.

“There’s so many shows I’ve done where it’s this love theme,” says Dorman. “Where these two people come together and it’s romantic, they experience this thing, and it’s amazing, and that shifts their world. I loved that this was two humans coming together. It wasn’t about romance, it was two humans stripping each other back and seeing each other. I just f---ing loved it.”

Dorman—Kiwi-born, kinda claimed (or assumed) as one of our own—is sitting at an outside table at a café in Los Angeles with his phone propped up so we can see each other over Zoom while we talk (and he eats).

“It’s bright,” he says. “I have sunnies on. Here’s my eyes. Hello there,” he says, leaning into the camera. “It’s so bright I had to put sunnies on. It’s always weird when you’re chatting to someone, and they’ve got sunglasses on. So some serious apologies.”

Dorman’s (justified) enthusiasm for Treasure and Dirt goes beyond the PR hamster wheel. The 45-year-old—who first broke through in 2002 in The Secret Life of Us as baby-faced musician Christian and has since carved an impressive career in the US in under-the-radar streaming hits Patriot (Amazon Prime Video) and For All Mankind (Apple TV), as well as last year’s local Netflix hit Territory—has been around the block long enough to know when he sees something that he likes.

“We are creatures of comfort,” he says. “And I feel like I can lull into a space of comfort at times, as we all do, and I felt like the projects that I was working on were moving towards that space where it was comfortable. So I was looking for someone that wanted to do something different, someone that wasn’t afraid to take a risk and do something outside the box.”

Directed by Madeleine Gottleib, with the bulk of the episodes written by Matt Cameron (with Kate Mulvany penning episode two), Treasure and Dirt does indeed throw caution to the wind. The camera tilts and the sense of unease is palpable, as Nulla is filled with freaks, geeks and everyone in between—including a pony-tailed mayor who enjoys his hot tub, a bizarre religious sect, a couple of warring mining magnates and an underground fight club.

“The script reads as a crime show, which it is—we’re really good at doing the procedural crime shows—but the thing that was a real kicker was sitting down with the director [Gottleib],” Dorman recalls. “She talked to me about her vision, and I called my team straight afterwards and said, ‘Absolutely, yes.’

“What she set out to do was something that I’d been waiting for someone to want to do, and for me to be a part of. It’s interesting because, on some jobs, you’re wooed by the powers-that-be, and you come in and you’re so excited, and then once you actually get going on the project, things shift, and that’s just how it goes.

“This was one of those shows where something was pitched, and when we got on the floor, that was exactly what we were trying to do.

“I worked on a show called Patriot a long time ago, and that was one where Amazon had just started streaming, and it was the perfect sweet spot, to be in a position where everyone said, ‘Cool, let’s do something so different.’

“And it had been a long time between drinks, in finding that perfect cocktail, where things were working in our favour...”

“What I learned when I was out there was that the opals will always find you.”
— Michael Dorman