A Review of 'Secret City' Season 2 Episode 1 - "Run Little Rabbit"

This is a review of Secret City Season Two Episode One—"Run Little Rabbit," which contains major spoilers both for season 1 and for this episode.

Season one of Secret City was an unexpectedly delightful Netflix binge delivered all the way from Australia, from the capital city of Canberra to be precise. Over six episodes, investigative journalist Harriet Dunkley (Anna Torv) got sucked into a huge conspiracy involving Chinese political interference, home-grown secret service repression, and high level governmental corruption.

Everyone Harriet roped into her quest for the truth seemed to end up in danger, and in the end absolutely nothing was as it seemed at first. Her ex even got murdered along the way and eventually she faced prison for breaking the Aussie version of the Official Secrets Act.

Under the Eagle

Now season two starts with a bang! A boy, who we haven't previously seen in season one, leaves his house in Adelaide and then it explodes, killing the rest of his family. Meanwhile, our heroine Harriet is out of jail again and raving it up under a bridge with a new pal. There's a new Prime Minister, but Harriet’s arch nemesis Catriona Bailey (Jacki Weaver) is still in power pulling the strings. She is also taking secret midnight messages in Chinese (the subtitles didn't translate what was said, so we can only imagine). At the same time as all this, an Aussie special forces operation in Pakistan has gone awry, with one soldier taken hostage.

How are all these things linked? And why are the military checking out the bombsite? At first, a gas leak is blamed for the explosion, then the official narrative changes and the sole survivor, Robbie Lambert (Frederick Banks du Rietz), is accused of having links to a left extremist group, with the implication being that they were storing their bombs in his garage! That's a real Bridge style red herring. But wait, that's not all! There's also a distressed woman monitoring the bomb site, who previously escaped from the back of a van and seems to be known to the military. What the heck is going on?

I like a show which credits the audience with some intelligence and doesn't give everything to us on a plate. The aforementioned Bridge is good for that, also Jordskott. Is it just a coincidence that all these three TV series feature a blonde haired female protagonist?

Strong Female Roles

A signature note from season one was the strong female roles in Secret City. Indeed, diversity was clearly intended, with Harriet's ex Kim (Damon Herriman) being a transwoman and there being several Chinese characters, including a strong performance by Eugenia Yuan as Weng Meigui.

In season two, alongside the returning Torv and Weaver, we meet some interesting new characters. Karen Koutoufides (Danielle Cormack) is an ambitious populist politician, and it just so happens that the bomb site in Davoren Park, Adelaide, is within her constituency. Later on, she will offer Harriet a job as media advisor.

Koutoufides even knows the Lambert kid! And therefore, she is convinced he is no extremist. Pausing only to admire the ridiculous tiny mustache sported by her PA Declan Boyd (Benedict Hardie), we then get to know Mina Almasi (Louisa Mignone) better. She is Harriet's rave buddy at the beginning and it turns out that Mina and Harriet were cellmates in jail.

Mina receives a classified document by email, which seems to suggest that Catriona Bailey signed off on a cover-up of the killing of her family by the Australian military in Iraq back in 2003. In a laughable imitation of electronic wizardry, the email self-destructs and leaves a dancing ASCII rabbit in its place.

Twists Aplenty

Mina asks Harriet for help in talking to Bailey, even though this is clearly not a good idea. And indeed, when Mina does eventually wrangle a meeting, it isn't with Bailey but with her slimy PA Andrew Griffiths (Marcus Graham) who goes on the offensive and threatens Mina with both a parole violation and the prospect of her husband’s "suspiciously successful roof tile business being audited."

Mina, being the sensible person she is, refuses to back down, and instead seeks out Bailey for a selfie opportunity, telling her she knows that she covered up the murder of her family. Oh cripes, that might be the end of Mina, even though we only just met her! Especially when she goes off to meet the ruthless Bailey for a midnight meeting. But instead, in a shocking twist, she finds Bailey dead! This was not at all expected, since Bailey was the biggest villain of season one, and so it’s a gutsy move to kill her off so quickly in season two.

The freaked-out Mina has clearly been framed, so she goes on the run and Harriet takes her phone to confuse matters for those tracking her. She, thus, gets to see a taunting message from the Rabbit on the phone before she casts it aside from a car and leaves Canberra at the end of the episode. Whilst she did say at the beginning she wanted to get out of town, but probably not like this...

Thoughts and Predictions

So that was a quick summary of the action in episode one, which did a good job of introducing a raft of new characters and setting up a lot of questions. To finish off, here are some of mine:

• Most importantly, where is this all going? It is a bit hard to say right now since the different threads are still being announced. The lesson of season one is that they will all eventually tie together somehow.
• Who killed Bailey? It seems like the main suspect must be the Rabbit, whoever or whatever they are, since they appear to have set up Mina. Yet Bailey certainly had many enemies.
• I'm liking the idea of the random military woman being some sort of super killer on the loose, seeking justice. Will she develop into a major new character?
• Is Mina's husband (Robert Rabiah) shady or is he simply jealous of Harrie's relationship with Mina?
• The grumpy special forces officer Joseph Sullivan (Rob Collins) seems like a fun character, could he be a new love interest for Harriet?