A priest goes from mass to mass killer in a new four-part, imported mystery series that gets an “A” for Australia.

This limited series, which starts Thursday on co-owned Sundance Now and AMC+, is a reminder that the technology of filmmaking that has transformed the production of movies and TV shows for the past two decades or so knows no borders.

Great TV shows are coming from all over the world these days, and they’re getting picked up everywhere too. 

Three things are driving the trend: The constant need for content, the international reach and penetration of our big streaming companies, and high standards of production that have taken hold all over the globe.

The business model for the big streamers -- or at least the biggest of them -- is to always be replenishing the content supply. 

Since they always need more, shopping internationally is on the increase, with payoffs for the streamers and their subscribers.

The big streaming companies span the globe. They are looking for content from all over to serve all of their global constituencies with content in all languages, as long as they can be subtitled across the language spectrum.

Production quality throughout most of the world has come into conformity with the expectations of the streamers and their viewer-subscribers. International TV productions are polished, compelling and ready to go.

This new one was filmed in rural Australia, a region the townsfolk in the show call “scrublands,” and not necessarily with great affection either.

That’s the title of the show -- “Scrublands” -- which is adapted from a crime novel of the same name by Chris Hammer.

The show takes place a year after the unthinkable: A young, charismatic priest (Jay Ryan, pictured above) suddenly and without apparent provocation, appears at his church doorway after a mass and fatally shoots five parishioners in the churchyard with the kind of high-powered assault weapon that is common to such massacres in the real world.

The people of the close-knit town, called Riversend, are understandably traumatized. In the year since the killings, many people have moved away. Storefronts have become vacant on the town’s once-vibrant main street. The remaining townspeople are still in mourning.

The murders and the life of the town and its priest are seen in flashbacks. Before the shooting, the priest had been established at the local Catholic church for two years after appearing out of nowhere one day and telling everybody he was their new priest.

Here in the present day, an investigative reporter (Luke Arnold) shows up from Sydney with the aim of writing a puff piece on the town and its people a year later.

But he begins to find evidence that not everything about the murders is what it seems. The mystery at the center of the show isn’t a whodunnit, because everyone knows it was the priest. 

What no one knows, however, is: Why did he do it? Against the wishes of his editor, the reporter sets himself in search of the truth.

“Scrublands” is another home run for AMC Networks (out of many) and also a home run for Aussie TV in particular and international TV in general.

The last AMC Australian drama reviewed here was “Firebite” in 2021 -- about vampires and vampire hunters in a sector of the Outback that was even more scrubby than “Scrublands.”

That show was one of the best seen anywhere in 2021. “Scrublands” is right up there with it.

“Scrublands” starts streaming Thursday, May 2, on Sundance Now and AMC+.