In between eps of a weekly, live, local turd, Jane Campion's Top of the Lake got under the skin of this junkie and seven hours later over a mere two nights, faith has been restored in watching New Zealand-made police drama.
Sure it was funded totes overseas. It's director hasn't worked in her birth country for two decades. Its leads were Americans and Australians and a Scotsman. But its Queenstown setting and cast of supporting characters were recognisably and unselfconsciously Kiwi.
This was good television. A believable, vulnerable, spiky heroine in Elizabeth Moss, no matter her Oz accent drifting in and out. A credible Kiwi bloke of a cop - something not quite right somewhere in that head of his - in David Wenham. And Peter Mullan evincing a migrant with a serious and ruthless sense of entitlement. The child actors were convincing. Holly Hunter stole every scene she was in.
And then there was the writing: where - not unlike The Good Wife - unfinished plot strands were left for the audience to pick up and finish in their heads. This mini-series was about character, framed in a missing girl procedural, no matter that its plot elements are familiar - execution by directors Campion and Gareth Davis was flawless.
A damned fine show.
Postscript: just two things that stuck out for this viewer and his Other Half -
- a child in police custody is never returned to their home when there is suspicion of abuse - and the possibility of further abuse; and
- Oz cops may bear arms in Oz but if they're on secondment in New Zealand, I doubt very much they'd be allowed to carry a firearm whilst working here.
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