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Clip description
Ellen ‘Mack’ Mackenzie (Anita Hegh) drives Peter Church (Peter Phelps) back to undercover headquarters after picking him up from the police station. He was 'arrested’ as part of a successful drug sting where he played the buyer. Church is still smarting because a detective gave him a bruising in the name of 'authenticity’ but he gets little sympathy from Mack. Back at headquarters, the team gets underway on a new case.
Curator’s notes
'Ratcatcher’ is quick to establish the Stingers world, opening on a drug bust in which apparent dealer Peter Church (Peter Phelps) gets arrested. The twist comes when we discover he is really an undercover cop. This car journey scene is our first real glimpse of the characters Mack and Church. It uses dialogue economically to set up some key traits: Church’s rogue streak and Mackenzie’s no-nonsense authority.
In this sequence we also get our first glimpse of undercover headquarters, the core setting for Stingers. This was an old factory space that doubled as the Stingers production studio. Both interior and exterior were used for headquarters scenes. By using the factory the production team aimed to depart from a studio look. The result is a feeling of texture, space and three dimensions that studio productions can sometimes lack. In later seasons of Stingers, working with tighter budgets, the production moved to the Channel Nine studios.
