Apple TV buys Australian drama Dustfall, its second licensed series after Small Prophets, and sets Stick season 2Apple TV buys Australian drama Dustfall, its second licensed series after Small Prophets, and sets Stick season 2

Apple TV has acquired Dustfall, a six-episode Australian crime drama starring Anna Torv, and will premiere it in 2027.

Apple announced the deal on 8 October. Torv plays Antigone Pollard, known as Tig, a detective called in on a sexual assault case that turns darker when a key suspect is found dead, and which drags up secrets from her own adolescence. The series is set and filmed on the Gold Coast and adapted from Vikki Petraitis's book The Unbelieved. Dianne Taylor wrote it for the screen with Stuart Page, Belinda Chayko and Beatrix Christian, and Emma Freeman directs. Juliet Stevenson, Peter Fenton, Bert LaBonte, Kate Box and Jay Ryan are among the cast.

It is not an Apple production. Soapbox Pictures and Moonriver Television made it for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in association with the BBC, ZDF and Screen Australia, and Federation International distributes it worldwide.

Where can you watch Dustfall, and when?

Not on Apple TV first. Apple's announcement says the series screens on ABC and ABC iview in Australia, and that the BBC and ZDF hold premiere rights in their own territories, which covers the UK and Germany. Apple TV's premiere comes in 2027 with no month given. Apple does not say whether Dustfall will come to Apple TV in Australia, the UK or Germany after those broadcasters have shown it, so viewers there should assume their local broadcaster is the place to watch for now.

Stick returns on 4 November

Apple also released the trailer for the second season of Stick, its golf comedy with Owen Wilson. The ten episodes start on 4 November with two, then one a week until 30 December, according to iClarified. Wilson's Pryce Cahill sets out to become the oldest golfer to win a major, with encouragement from his old rival Clark Ross, played by Timothy Olyphant, while Peter Dager's Santi edges towards turning professional. Rhea Seehorn joins as Amanda, a coach, alongside Marc Maron's caddie Mitts. Jason Keller created the series and runs it.

Our take

Dustfall is the second time in a few months that Apple has bought a finished series from a public broadcaster's co-production. The first was Small Prophets, from the BBC, which Apple acquired in August and which reviewers greeted with near-unanimous praise when it reached Apple TV this week. When Apple first scheduled Small Prophets, 9to5Mac described the licensing deal as unusual for Apple TV, and it now calls Dustfall the second recent break from Apple TV's originals-first approach. The service had spent nearly seven years building a catalogue almost entirely of its own originals.

Two is a pattern. Both shows were made for a home broadcaster, both air there first, and Apple takes the rest of the world afterwards. That is a cheap way to add finished, already-reviewed drama to a catalogue long criticised as thin, and it costs Apple only the rights in markets the original broadcaster does not serve. APPDOOK expects more of these deals, mainly from Britain and Australia, where public broadcasters co-produce with international partners as a matter of course.

What is still unknown is how Apple presents them. Small Prophets carries no Apple Original label, and nothing in Apple's announcement suggests Dustfall will either. For a viewer that distinction hardly matters. For Apple it lets the service grow without diluting the brand it has built around its originals, and that matters more as the price of the service keeps rising.