Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake is a haunting six-part crime thriller set in the beautiful yet dangerous town of Paradise, a fictional idyll full of dark secrets in a remote part of New Zealand. People have been quick to compare it to the seminal Twin Peaks with its eccentric cast of characters, buried secrets and off-kilter tone but it never once feels derivative or beholden to Lynch’s classic series - It might share a similar atmosphere but it is its own unique beast.

The six-part novel (as Campion describes it) is centred on Detective Robin Griffin, a young officer returning to Paradise after her mother falls ill with cancer, and her quest to find Tui, a 12-year old girl…

I just finished binge-watching all six episodes of Top of the Lake and I have to admit it has been an emotional rollercoaster. The episodes themselves are very tonally consistent and as the series progresses the tension is slowly but steadily built only to reach several climaxes during the last two episodes. Especially these two episodes and the very end of this first season are hard to stomach. The central performance by Elisabeth Moss is top-notch, she portrays this troubled and multi-layered character with such ease. The rest of the cast delivers as well, with other stand-outs being Peter Mullan as the toxic drug-lord and unofficial leader of Laketop where the whole first season is set as well as Holly…

I watched this in nearly a day (as in I watched the first episode the night before, then spent 12 hours without electricity, then watched the other 5 episodes the next day as soon as the power came back). And I’ve been thinking about it non-stop ever since.

It’s feminist myth-making and biblical reinvention at their best and finest. The horrors of patriarchy unfold in such an astute way, unveiling all their subtleties and the trauma they inflict, the way they shape the world, communities, and people. And after showing all of that, the show provides a path toward healing.

I’m so haunted by the way it balances sensuality and violence, how it posits them as clear opposites, and how…

Killer vibes and some brilliant work from everyone involved but ultimately, I found this incredibly frustrating.

For the majority of the season, it pretends not to care about the plot that much, only to try to quickly wrap everything up by the end in a messy and sloppy manner. Plus some truly lazy dialogue moments.
Leaves an impression of a deeply troubled development process (possibly due to the last-minute funding pull out from ABC and pre-planned Australian production).

In many ways, this feels to me like a reminder of where the (TV) series landscape was in 2013:
- some bolder takes on subverting the genre
- first signs of truly innovative performance-driven takes at story-telling
- a few appearances of…

Слегка попался я на проблеме ожиданий, конечно, с первым сезоном этого детища Кэмпион, создательницы великолепного «Пианино». Сюжет здесь как бы намекает на некий типичный детектив: героиня Элизабет Мосс случаем прибывает в родной маленький городок, из которого уехала с матерью после произошедших трагичных событий много лет назад, поскольку обнаруживается, что одна из местных девочек, 12летняя Туи, беременна. И, понятное дело, теперь героине надо помочь Туи справиться с этим, да ещё и распутать, а кто ж виновен в произошедшем. 

Однако для Кэмпион вся эта детективная история находится далеко не на первом плане. На поверку «Вершина озера» оказывается историей о преследующих всю жизнь травмах и о тяжком женском бремени среди самовлюблённых мужчин. Не скажу, что я прям остался в восторге, однако главную черту…