Review

Tui, a twelve year old school girl, is pregnant and apparently attempts suicide by walking into a lake risking hyperthermia as a cry for help. The Police are immediately involved due to the girl's age, statutory rape, and visiting Sydney Detective Robin Griffin is called in to offer assistance to the Southern Lake Police. Robin is originally from the remote South Island area and knows a lot of the locals, she is home visiting her mother who has been diagnosed with cancer. Tui isn't talking much and when asked to write down who got her pregnant writes "NO ONE". What looked to be an afternoon to Robin is going to take a lot longer, especially as Tui disappears the next day.

Meanwhile a wimmins collective headed by the enigmatic GJ has brought land on the lake and are setting up containers to live in. The land is ironically named Paradise, which is what attracted GJ to it. Local hardman Matt Mitcham and his two sons are soon visiting as they believe they own the land the collective is on and Matt's wife is buried there. They learn local Real Estate Agent Bob Platt sold the land to one of the women from the collective. A little while later Bob is enticed out onto the lake by Matt's sons, Bob isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, where Matt confronts him over the land. In the wash up, that's a pun check the show to get it, Bob ends up overboard and drowns. Later Robin discovers his body near the shore. Think that's about it for the first episode, let's venture into the Kiwi heartland and see what dark secrets Jane Campion wants to tell us.

Top of the Lake is a seven part mini-series set in New Zealand that was originally meant to be funded by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the $15 million price tag being slightly too steep for Kiwi finances. Kiwi award winning Director Jane Campion had original cast Anna Paquin in the leading role of Robin Griffin but Paquin withdrew due to being pregnant, which lead to the far more versatile Elisabeth Moss accepting the role. Since the ABC had agreed to fund the project on the proviso that an Australian or New Zealander was cast in the leading role they withdrew their funding. Thankfully UKTV seeing a major hit stepped in at the last moment to replace the lost funding. Hence why we have a New Zealand production with Australian and North American actors joining locals all under the umbrella of U.K finance.

Sam Neill has described the New Zealand movie industry as the "cinema of unease", Top of the Lake fully endorses that description and underlines the unease many Kiwi productions seem to be inherently infused with. The locations are remote, the society is inward looking, and the overall atmosphere is at once bleak while tensions simmer just under the surface. There are some angry people here, and there are secrets waiting to unfold that may be best left undiscovered. Director Campion is all over the requirements with lingering long shots showing how isolate the location is and stunning close ups to view the depressing situation some people are living in. There's not a lot of overly sympathetic people really, the Police were called to Robin's Mother's house due to her live in care giver Turangi getting into an alcohol fuelled rage which left a hole in a door, yes violence isn't ever far away Campion tells us.

Against this backdrop Robin Griffin is dragged into the Tui situation, and you get the feeling she was only too pleased to be involved. We learn Robin was originally from the area, there was an incident involving Johnno, who we briefly meet, and some men, and her father died on the lake. Griffin finds she is the big city female Police Detective called into male dominated small town New Zealand to investigate a crime that local police chief Detective Sergeant Al Parker doesn't seem to be too worried about. The immediate mystery for Robin is who got Tui pregnant, suspicion is already falling on her father Matt Mitcham, which is only heightened when Tui goes missing the next day. Was she abducted, is Matt keeping her locked up somewhere, did she drown in the Lake?

I'm not quite sure where the wimmins' collective fits into all this, besides providing a plot point that leads to Matt Mitcham drowning Bob Platt in a pretty callous fashion, but a lot of attention is being focused on this aspect in the first episode. The collective is lead by GJ who seems to be an almost mesmerising leader to her female followers. GJ has decreed that the women live in shipping containers which only have a mattress to avoid them playing house, which proves to be patently incorrect when we see inside a couple of the containers. Great scene when one of the women launches into a domestic tale of violence involving a chimpanzee to the amazement of Matt Mitcham and his boys, clearly not everyone is playing with a full deck of cards down the collective way. Tui was last seen at the collective so this may come into play later on in the series.

I guess the other major location is Matt Mitcham's compound, which he shares with daughter Tui, his two sons, and a woman who is not fully defined during the first episode. Matt love's his dogs, has a family arsenal that would rival what the local Cops have at hand, and is somewhat paranoid with CCTV monitoring the approachs to the compound. Clearly Matt has something to hide and we expect the worse considering he killed Bob Platt without breaking a sweat. Tui has no love for her father considering she points a rifle at his head during her return home from the local Police station. Interesting Matt can tell her that he was pleased she didn't talk.

Campion takes an interesting approach to the score, she uses Mark Bradshaw's music sparingly, relying on ambient noise for the most part - wind, traffic, etc. There's a real feeling of the primordial bush invading the living spaces as Campion underlines the almost eerie nature of the Lake and its surrounding peaks and forests.

At one stage Johnno relates a Maori myth about the lake which I guess we are meant to take as a metaphor for what may be coming at us. In order to rescue a woman a Maori Warrior burnt a demon to death, with nothing left but the demon's still beating heart. The burning created a basin with water melted from the surrounding Alps filling the basin and forming the lake. The water rises and falls with each heartbeat of the demon's heart which is submerged at the centre of the lake. Okay that whooshed right over my head, though I guess the lake features prominently in the story arc. Might need a tad more time to mull that one over, clearly Campion is hinting at something I'm not yet seeing.

Elisabeth Moss was an excellent choice as Robin Griffin, barring the strange accent she has adopted, and nails the role's requirement. In Moss' capable hands Robin comes across as complex, slightly aloof, but more than capable of doing the job. She has a past with the town, alluded to in this episode, and is another outsider that is going to impact the course of the town's immediate future. All the lead characters are outsiders, including Matt Mitcham, and are either from outside the town or have spent a lot of time away from the town. Johnno for example has just spent eight years in a Thai jail for possession of marijuana. I'll get around to the rest of the leads as each episode unfolds.

At its heart Top of the Lake, at least on the evidence provided by Paradise Sold, is an intense character driven drama that is slow paced, not a lot really happens in the first hour long episode, and that is grudging in delivering anything really concrete. This isn't going to work for everyone, if after immediate action and everything neon sign posted then check out one of those CSI shows instead, but which will drag a more mature audience into its slowly building web. There are some stunning performances going down, with all the leads nailing the requirements. If I had to sum up episode one in a word that word would be "brooding". Clearly this one comes highly recommended, though with the proviso that some readers may find it a tad slow moving with a very ugly visage, I would imagine we will not get out of this miniseries at the end of the seven episodes with any warm fuzzy feelings. Sometimes television does work as a medium that throws curve balls our way, Top of the Lake is one of those curved balls, it's not going to offer anyone help if they start drowning in the morbid atmosphere.

ScaryMinds Rates this episode as ...