Top of the Lake

Series: Top of the Lake
Seasons: 1 
Episodes: 7, Sundance Channel, 2013
Availability: Streaming on Netflix
Time it took to finish it :1 sitting

For my next blog post, I decided to change it up.

Instead of focusing on a show that was cancelled, I decided to focus on a series that is still ongoing, but I've been hearing about it all year so I decided to give it a try.

This is Top of the Lake, a New Zealand crime drama starring Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss.

The miniseries, set in Laketop, New Zealand, starts with 12-year-old Tui Mitcham walking towards the middle of a lake, presumably to commit suicide. She's then stopped by the headmistress of her school who, after taking her to the nurse's office, discovers that she's pregnant.

image via: thejournalist.ie

Det. Robin Griffin, an Australian detective whose in New Zealand to visit her cancer-stricken mother, is called unto the case. She specializes in sex crimes involving minors and believes that Tui was a victim of rape. However, shortly after starting an investigation, Tui then mysteriously vanishes, setting off a massive manhunt for the girl led by Griffin as she starts to uncover what everyone is hiding in this small town.

Ultimately, Top of the Lake is a wonderfully engrossing show with spectacular characters and incredible acting from the entire cast that makes the show so addicting to watch, even if the last few episodes get a bit ludicrous in the end.

The cast also includes Academy Award winner holly Hunter as GJ, a spiritual guru who runs a camp for grieving women while Peter Mullan plays Tui's father. He's a powerful figure in the town's criminal underworld and even the police are often intimidated by him.

Also, the series has gotten several acclaim from everyone for its feminist themes and several points it has brought up regarding rape culture.

Griffin is a detective trying to navigate in a world that's usually dominated by chauvinistic males. We see that this small town is one that believes in violent masculinity and exercise their machoness by seemingly indulging in rape.

Grifin, (*spoiler alert*) a victim of gang rape at the age of 15, personifies how rape victims have a lack of choice after a rape, and how hard it is for a rape victim to fully recover from such an attack.

This is way brutal than anything on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. 

image via: theguardian.com

My only real complain is how many of these themes hit you over the head with them instead of bringing them up in a subtle manner, which is how I prefer my themes to be presented to me. However, since this is a subject matter that is rarely seen, I'll let it pass.

Also, this is a really minor complaint, but when this show aired internationally it ran for six episodes. For its U.S. release though, it ran for seven episodes, so the episodes were cut at really bad times in order to stretch out the series. You'll see what I mean when you watch it.

Again, that's a really minor complaint though, but it is a bit jarring. Thankfully, the show has great visuals. Top of the Lake is worth watching for the scenery alone. As I write this, I saw that the show won a well-deserved Emmy for its cinematography. We saw New Zealand in the Lord of the Rings movies, but here, the New Zealand draws just as many awe-inspiring visuals on a fraction of the budget.

See you next week!