Almost like an alternate reality version of True Detective, Jane Campion's masterful six-part BBC series Top of the Lake deals with the themes of what bad men do to women from a female perspective. Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss pulls off both a New Zealand accent and the performance of a career as Detective Robin Griffin, an inspector from Sydney who's called into the small town of Laketop when it's discovered that a local 12-year-old girl is pregnant. She sticks around when said girl suddenly disappears. It transpires that Griffin has her own history with the town which she is forced to face when trying to track down the heavily pregnant Tui, coming up against the girl's father and local gang boss Matt Mitcham (Peter Mullan, who apparently has it in his contract that he can never play nice people), old flame Jono, off-kilter guru GJ (Holly Hunter) and a police force that's alternately indifferent and openly misogynistic. Campion's cinematic credentials give the show a similar prestige look to True Detective, and utilises New Zealand's gorgeous mountainous landscapes to evoke the claustrophobia that True Detective harnesses so well from the misty swamps of Louisiana. The delicate ecosystem of Laketop and the nature of the case at hand give Top of the Lake a moral ambiguity that's maybe even more complex than True Detective's. And it's got about half as many laughs.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
