Tatau: Story, Cast and Series Facts

Story and premise

Joe Layton (New Worlds, Father Brown) and Theo Barklem-Biggs (Silk, The Inbetweeners Movie) have been cast as Kyle Connor and Paul 'Budgie' Griffiths – the lead roles in BBC AMERICA's new drama Tatau. Set in the Cook Islands, the (8×60) series, written by Richard Zajdlic, is co-produced by Touchpaper TV (Being Human) and New Zealand's largest screen production company, South Pacific Pictures, for BBC Three and BBC AMERICA.

Tatau follows Kyle (Layton) and Budgie (Barklem-Biggs), two twenty-something friends from London that set off to travel the world. Ahead of the journey, Kyle gets a Maori-style tattoo to celebrate their eventual destination: the Cook Islands.

When snorkeling in a lagoon, Kyle finds the dead body of a local girl, Aumea, tied up underwater. Returning to the lagoon with the police, Kyle finds her corpse has disappeared. But Kyle knows what he saw. Desperate to uncover what happened, Kyle and Budgie find themselves sucked deeper and deeper into a world of Maori myths, symbols, and hallucinatory visions… until finally the full meaning of Kyle's tattoo is revealed.

Series details

• Title: Tatau
• Format: Scripted
• Language: English
• Genres: Drama, Crime, Fantasy
• Premiere date: 2015-04-12
• Final broadcast date listed: 2015-05-17
• Status in TVmaze: Ended
• Network listed by TVmaze: BBC Three
• Network country: United Kingdom
• Typical episode runtime: 45 minutes
• TVmaze community rating: 7.3/10
• TVMaze ID: 1798

Cast and credited roles

• Joe Layton — Kyle Connor
• Theo Barklem-Biggs — Paul "Budgie" Griffiths
• Barry Atsma — Dries
• Shushila Takao — Aumea Vaipiti
• Temuera Morrison — Anaru Vaipiti
• Cian Elyse White — Lara Morgan
• Alex Tarrant — Maui Vaipiti
• Tai Berdinner-Blades — Tyler
• Kirk Torrance — Reverend Calcott
• Aruna Po-Ching — Patea Vaipiti

Seasons in the TVmaze catalogue

• Season 1: premiered 2015-04-12; final listed air date 2015-05-17; episode order: 8.

Source and licence

Adapted from Tatau on TVmaze. The synopsis is reproduced as plain text; catalogue facts, cast and season records are selected and reformatted. This adapted text is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, following the TVmaze API licence. Network and web-channel credits identify the service listed in this source; they do not establish current streaming availability.