Top of the Lake

It's unlikely that you've ever heard much about New Zealand TV series that are must-watches. Top of the Lake is likely the first one.

Created by Jane Campion (she of The Piano fame) and Gerard Lee, with Campion sharing directing duties with Garth Davis, Top of the Lake takes the rather familiar trope of the police procedural and uses it as the prism through which we examine a small Kiwi community and the various characters that inhabit it.

Tui, a local girl, goes missing shortly after a suicide attempt wherein she tried to drown herself in the lake of the title. She is the daughter of Matt (Peter Mullan), the local kingpin who keeps the town safe and largely employed in his empire by one means or another.  Sydney cop Robin Givens (Mad Men's Elizabeth Moss), over visiting her dying mother, is sequestered for Tui's initial interview and subsequent search party. What follows would give away what surfaces over the six hour running time but needless to say every character in an always expanding ensemble has a horrifying secret that comes out, including Robin. Adultery, rape, corruption, bribery, pedophilia and murder all feature against a backdrop of sexism and apathy. Dealing out town justice leaves further reaching scars than ever originally intended.

Campion's name is normally associated with far more art-house fare. Her work often basted in pretentiousness and dull restraint, and while Top of the Lake has the same ponderous scenery it works in the show's favour. The beauty of the landscape masking the ugliness of its inhabitants and town. The performances are universally brilliant. Moss has a good grip on the accent and her Givens is a wonderfully combative mixture of stubbornness and vulnerability. Mullan may appear to be running on his "hard-bastard" mode initially but as the show progresses it becomes apparent that he is as much a wounded father as a hardened gangster. Then there's David Wenham playing the nicest on-the-take copper you ever met, Thomas M. Wright's reformed drug dealer who lives in a tent and Holly Hunter as JG, the weirdest character you are ever likely to see in a straight crime drama.

The series is satisfyingly short. There is no sense that story information is being withheld to stretch out running time or that the creators' eyes were looking at this being a franchise. What this simply is a mystery played out with wonderful attention to detail and something to say with an absolute start and finish. Top of the Lake might not feel that different from the slew of other series dealing with similar subject matter (The Killing and Broadchurch immediately spring to mind) but it manages to stand out with a unique setting, tone and characters. It might be a town run by vicious men but it's one held up by bruised and resilient women.