Embracing the darkness: Tasmania's Winter Festivals as Parody and Homage in Amazon’s Deadloch

Australia’s southern-most state, Tasmania, is a popular tourist destination, with over 1.3 million visitors per year (Tourism Tas 2024). The island state features areas of pristine wilderness, looming mountains, and spectacular coastlines. It is also foodie heaven, with its local produce and wine as much a drawcard as its scenery. Despite the cold weather, Tasmanian tourism campaigns invite visitors to immerse themselves in ‘The Off Season’, when things get ‘wilder, weirder and more wonderful’ (Discover Tas 2025) by partaking in sophisticated and hedonistic events fuelled by sumptuous food and drink. Of the several winter festivals in Tasmania, the most famous, and somewhat notorious, one is Dark Mofo. The hallmarks of the festival are its enticing Winter Feast, provocative and often controversial performance art, and the Nude Solstice Swim. While providing a boost to tourism in the less-hospitable winter months, these festivals also feature bonfires, burning effigies, and paganistic outdoor dance parties, demonstrating Tasmania’s willingness to embrace its dark, gothic nature. How does this tourism milieu seep into popular culture? Season 1 of Amazon’s 2023 eight-part comedy-crime series Deadloch is set in a fictitious Tasmanian town and features a local crime spree colliding with its annual ‘Winter Feastival’ [sic]. This festive backdrop adds to the who-dunnit drama, with a town full of tourists and a nervous mayor who sees that the festival revenue is dropping as the body countrises. The show’s fictional festival includes events such as an all-women choir performing rock classics, an artistic mass nude photoshoot, and a signature culinary experience, ‘Beast on a Cross’: a nose-to-tail outdoor dining extravaganza. This interdisciplinary paper combines food and tourism studies with screen scholarship to demonstrate how Deadloch constructs its narrative to lovingly parody and pay homage to Tasmania’s winter festivals and gastro-tourism.