Anna Torv was always told ‘don’t go out in that skirt’. Her superb new show challenges that idea

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

Anna Torv knows how the cop stuff works: the purposeful walk down a hallway, the crime-scene crouch and the coaxing of information from a victim or a suspect. She’s done it enough times across her storied career that she was almost reluctant to do it again. “I’m like, oh God, here we go again’,” says Torv.

But with Dustfall, her new ABC crime drama about the drugging and rape of a young woman, it was less about what she could do on screen and more about what the show could say about sexual assault and consent.

“It takes it seriously,” says Torv, who is, as always, wonderfully forthright to talk to. “I specifically was really interested in the 360 idea of it. That it is not just the victim that’s impacted; it’s the ramifications of it, across generations and friendship groups.

“I have a son – and I love men – and I find the whole concept of consent really, really interesting: how people view it, how you have those conversations and also the generational difference and separation between what we now find unacceptable and what was acceptable. I just felt there was a way we could tell that or show that, open a conversation and a discussion without, you know, banging people over the head.”

Torv plays Detective Tig Pollard, who is called in when a naked and disorientated Edie (Zoe Phillips) is found in a cane field early one morning with no recollection of what happened after she left the pub the night before.

What follows is a nuanced drama – the best I have seen this year – that doesn’t flinch from the aftermath of sexual assault, but also layers in all the ways, big and small, consent can be corroded. For Tig, that includes battles with her overbearing mother (Juliet Stevenson) and a former boyfriend (Peter Fenton) keen to re-enter her life. It’s not easy, and that’s the point.

“I’m right in the middle of that older generation and the newer generation, and we were taught – I was taught specifically by my mother – ‘do not go out in that skirt’,” says Torv. “That is how you keep yourself safe. Do not go and leave your friends. That was it. And then you have a new generation that’s like, but we should be able to go out and not live in fear. We should.

“As a detective, Tig is going, ‘My job is to protect these women, and they should be able to do that.’ And yet, if I had a daughter, I would want to say, ‘Don’t f---ing go out.’ That’s the murky world we live in in the show, but also live [in real life].”

The series, which was shot in the Gold Coast hinterland, is adapted from Vikki Petraitis’s 2022 award-winning novel The Unbelieved by Dianne Taylor and directed by Emma Freeman. And while the story is fictional, it is depressingly easy to find echoes of Dustfall’s story in real life.

You only have to look at the news recently to see the alleged rape of a teenage girl by three boys from an elite private school in Sydney last month and the growing furore over the delayed response to gang-rape allegations at Cornell University in the US, where a woman said she was sexually assaulted after being plied with alcohol and drugs in 2024.

“I didn’t want to objectify the female experience,” says Freeman, who directed all six episodes. “It was about actually having a front-row seat in what it’s like at different stages of your life to deal with sexual assault. It’s a conversation that we need to have. It’s a conversation here. It’s a conversation worldwide.

“When you’ve got one in five women who are victim-survivors of sexual assault in Australia, we need to talk about it. And that’s reported figures. So I just really hope it provokes a conversation.”

Torv agrees. “Vikki’s book was brilliant, but I knew that there was going to be room to move and also Trojan horse, I guess, a little bit more stuff in,” she says. “You take people into a genre that feels very familiar and where people feel comfortable, and then you can then just slowly start to push the parameters a little bit.”

That push can be seen most clearly during a confronting scene in episode one, where Edie is examined in hospital after her assault. The nurse takes her time documenting the teenager’s injuries – every cut, bruise and bite. She talks Edie through the vaginal swab, and offers her the morning-after pill.

In real life, it’s standard procedure. But many crime dramas prefer the easier shot of the victim being led away, covered with a blanket. Dustfall, however, refuses to look away.

“I didn’t feel there was a need to dramatise [that] because what is going on is dramatic enough,” says Freeman. “And I think, also looking at [other] projects, you don’t often get the victim-survivors’ point of view of what it’s like after you have experienced sexual assault. I haven’t seen that scene before, so I really wanted to be in the point of view of Edie and really understand what it feels like to go through that process.”

Filming that scene required providing support for those not only in front of the camera, but behind it as well. The sexual assault and domestic violence service Full Stop Australia gave counselling and advice, while intimacy co-ordinator Kate Wormald supported cast and crew on set.

“Many people on that particular day found that incredibly confronting and couldn’t stay in the room,” says Freeman. “It was a very upsetting scene to shoot and really moving.”

Even Freeman, who is now directing Baby Reindeer star Jessica Gunning’s new Netflix series Feral, began to feel the emotional line between fact and fiction starting to blur.

“It was a really hard show to make, and I would come home many nights in tears,” says Freeman. “But I just accepted that that was also OK – that it was something I was looking at and was moving me.

“[It was also difficult to] sit through it every day in the edit as well, because it’s only me and two editors. You shoot it, and you go through this extraordinary experience – which was a really positive one – but then you’re alone in the edit for months, looking through all this material. Thankfully, I’m pretty robust and have good mental health, and I had Anna on the side, going, ‘Keep going!’”

For her part, Torv had the support of a former detective who had worked on sexual assault cases. “The thing that she constantly hammered on the head was that your job is to give the victim consent,” says Torv. “The victim must give consent. You must ask her for everything: ‘Can I do this?’, ‘May I touch you?’

“You have to give her control and power back because that’s the thing that she has lost. And you have to be as soft and as gentle [as you can]. If she doesn’t want to do something, she doesn’t have to do it.”

Torv and Freeman have known each other for more than 20 years, having first worked together on The Secret Life of Us in 2004. It was Freeman’s first directing gig and Torv’s first on-screen role (“I came in when the show was dead,” says Torv, laughing. “I killed the show”). They also both grew up on the Gold Coast (and have since returned to live there) and even, briefly, went to the same high school.

“The only thing I remember from that experience – and I wasn’t in it – was the grade 12 or 11 drama competition show [Sister Act],” says Torv. “I just have never forgotten it. It was just so great. Years later, I realised, ‘oh, Emma directed it!’”

Since then, they have worked together on two award-winning dramas – Secret City on Foxtel and The Newsreader on the ABC – and have fine-tuned their relationship, knowing when to push each other and (sometimes) pull back.

When asked – during separate phone calls – to describe their relationship, they both reply “brutally honest”.

“We have the same taste,” says Torv. “It’s funny because we don’t have the same taste in life, but on a set, we know [what we’re doing]. I’ll try anything she asks me to do. But that’s been honed over 25 years.

“Whatever the show is, the joy of it has to be in the making. That’s kind of where my job ends. If you don’t enjoy that process, then I’m like, ‘well, why are you f---ing doing it?’ And Emma’s the same. I think both of us feel more at home on a set than anywhere else. I love it.”

Freeman, of course, agrees. “We’re not servicing each other’s egos. We’re servicing the story and the performance and the filmmaking. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to a serious collaborator.

“We’re constantly talking … We often change the script. We have conversations at night. It’s a very intense collaboration – but I feel like it shows in the work.”

Dustfall premieres at 8.20pm on Sunday, October 11, on ABC and ABC iview.

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) or the Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491.