Triggered by the tropes of small-town shows

Our own village is a deep well of mystery.

Whose meth lab is exploding at four in the morning this time?

When was my nature strip declared a communal dog toilet?

Are we the epicentre of some intergalactic zero-turn-mower arms race?

Forgetting the scourge of youth unemployment and pizza ovens, country towns are seen as quirky, so TV writers love to exploit them.

From the serious (Top of the Lake) to the silly (Rosehaven) to the sexy (True Blood), to the stupid (True Blood), every viewing season arrives with at least one tale from an otherwise inconsequential speck on the map.

At the more serious end of the spectrum comes Black Snow, now streaming on Stan, a series which best exhibits Top End agriculture since Fields of Fire.

Travis Fimmel (Vikings) plays a Queensland detective investigating the 1994 cold case murder of 17-year-old girl killed on the night of her school formal.

The literal opening of a very well-preserved time capsule reopens the investigation and Fimmel's semi-tortured copper is soon on his way north to Ashford, a community with roots in blackbirding, where South Sea Islanders were brought to the Australia in the 19th century to harvest sugar cane.

The nod to Twin Peaks - the hugely popular early '90s American TV series from David Lynch and Mark Frost - is hard to ignore, as are the pop culture references during flashbacks to that decade (Degrassi's on the TV, Clouds are on the radio).

Like Lynch and Frost's tragic high schooler Laura Palmer, the victim of Black Snow, played by Talija Blackman-Corowa, is "full of secrets" and soon we're peeling back the layers of time, family and community to find out "who killed Isabel Baker".

Watching this show reminds us how it's the murky nature of small towns which keeps us returning to what's become an art form unto itself. Ever since Dylan Thomas peered into windows of Llareggub to reveal the grotesque banality of ordinary folk in 1954's Under Milk Wood, we've been suckers for the little life and, these days, we're triggered by the tropes of the genre.

Here are a few:

Lynch uses these brilliantly. His most famous, of course, says: Welcome to Twin Peaks Population 51,201. Perhaps less remembered are the signs from his 1990 film Wild at Heart. The first declares: BIG TUNA TEXAS Pop 603 Elev 3700. The second, closer to town, is a metal sign in the shape of fish. "F--- YOU" its graffiti says. Fair enough.

"Nothing's finer than being in your diner," Jerry wrote on a headshot in the Bubble Boy episode of Seinfeld. His attempts to retract his statement sparked great umbrage among the locals. Meanwhile, the best recent use of the diner must surely be in Top Gun: Maverick. Tom Cruise's funniest scene since, well, ever.

Those feckless sheriffs are forever being pushed out of the investigation by the feds. We had to wait until Fargo before Frances McDormand's heavily pregnant Marge Gunderson restored our faith in the profession. "There's more to life than a little money, ya know?". Thanks Margie.

The venal pollies of pop culture tend to be even more incompetent than the cops. A friend recently posted a photo of this written on a T-shirt: "The mayor from Jaws is still the mayor in Jaws 2. It is so important to vote in your local elections."

The personification of shifty. Never leave your car with a local mechanic. Sean Penn left his with Billy Bob Thornton in U-Turn and look what happened to him. An unfortunate cliché, really, and one that doesn't reflect the amazing work of all those NRMA/RACV roadside assistant troupers out there ensuring families make it to the coast this summer. We salute you.

For too many years, small towns have been replete with attractive women just sitting around waiting for the arrival of a male to sweep them off their feet. Hopefully, in this more enlightened age, such lazy chauvinism has been eradicated from writing rooms. Still, Vicky and Simon were made for each other in A Country Practice.