The new 7-part series Top of the Lake starts tomorrow (March 1th) on the Sundance channel. The show also stars Holly Hunter as a spiritual leader, Peter Mullan as the menacing father of a missing daughter, and David Wenhan as the more senior detective in the Queenstown Police Station.
From what I have read and taken away from the trailers, this is no longer the New Zealand of Lord of the Rings. In fact, I doubt the New Zealand tourist board is pushing this new show. Think of it as The Killing in another beautiful environment with less rain.
Here is the basic premise of the show:
12 years old and 5 months pregnant, Tui Mitcham walks into a freezing lake ... then disappears. Detective Robin Griffin returns home to investigate, but it's not a simple missing persons case. In this breathtaking but remote mountain town, there are evil forces as powerful as the land itself. And those who offer a glimpse of paradise also provide a path to hell. Trapped where happiness and honest work are just out of reach, Griffin must not only find the girl but also face her own haunting past. With the men that she once left behind now standing in her way, every step closer to solving the case unearths a dangerous truth about herself.
Nancy DeWolf Smith in The Wall Street Journal noted the show's brutality in a recent review. pointing out:
...we soon learn that every character here is damaged in some way. Most of the men are ignorant brutes who act like dogs that have been chained in a yard all their lives. Most of the women are victims, addicted to emotional or physical pain at the hands of men they recklessly pursue. Among those trying to recover at the lake with GJ is a woman still in shock after seeing her beloved chimpanzee kill one of her friends before being killed himself. But wait, says one of the local louts, "Was the chimp your boyfriend or a pet?"
Our Peggy is no longer in Manhattan.
Note: Interestingly enough, The Killing was filmed in Vancouver. According to The Seattle Times, the show's creator Veena Sud decided to use Seattle as the setting for a few reasons:
"The graphic beauty of Seattle was so compelling; it reminded me of Copenhagen in the Danish series, incredibly brooding and tragic," said Sud..."As I started to research more about Seattle, it became clear it's one of the most liberal cities in America and one of the most literate ... and yet it's also a city with a dark underbelly," she said. "It has a huge runaway population that's very striking when you're a visitor to the city and see so many of these lost kids."
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