Tag Archives: Top Of The Lake
Top of the Lake Bottoms Out Again

China Girl TOTL

Okay, it’s kind of my fault for not learning my lesson the first time… check this out.

When it comes to “Top of the Lake, China Girl” it’s a bit of a giveaway to tell you – there’s no Chinese girl in the story and not even any bloody lake. Sure, there’s a bunch of Asian hookers, but I’m pretty sure none of them are actually Chinese.

You get to see a bit more of the star actress, Elizabeth Moss… she’s put on about fifteen kilos. Maybe that’s why she spends most of every episode on the brink of tears and about to collapse into a puddle of self-pity. Likewise, her cost-star, Gwendoline Christie (above) has a tendency to go all sooky and needy. My issue is that these are supposed to be gun-toting, hardened police officers. For god’s sake, if you’ve got a problem, just shoot some bastard. Don’t burst into fucking tears and sit cross-legged on the floor and binge-drinking alcohpops.

Talking of hardened, apparently it’s a requirement for inner-city Sydney male detectives in 2017 to appear like, dress and act like 1970’s porn stars, complete with weird little mustaches. These guys give misogyny a bad name – and I don’t mean in the usual, unpleasant context. I mean, they do it so badly. Seriously, if you want to commit any crime in Sydney, I recommend targeting the inner-city and King’s Cross. All the cops stationed there are either women who break into hysterical tears at the first sign of trouble, or weedy little detectives with a stack of Playboy magazines in the bottom drawer.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Moss has a strange habit of standing really close to people who want to attack her – so, no surprise, she gets attacked a lot. Even David Wenham, who’s crippled and in a wheelchair – and achieves looking even more creepy than usual with a really bad haircut –  manages to trundle around the desk and start strangling her.  For fuck’s sake, Liz! He’s in a wheelchair. Just tip the dickhead over on his side and kick him the nuts. Or shoot him.

Another bloke, the Main Obnoxious Villain, is someone Moss allows to sit right next to her on the beach. She gets all uppity and upset when he suddenly starts gnawing on her nose. And she still doesn’t shoot him.

In fact, the only thing in the whole series that gets shot to pieces is the credibility of the characters, the plot and possibly the careers of several well-known actors. I reckon Elizabeth Moss is a great actress, so I’m intrigued to understand how things can go so wrong. Jane Campion’s got production and script writing credits for TOTLCG, maybe she just wrote the title and left the rest stuck to a table in McDonald’s for someone else to finish – and didn’t bother to check later about the lack of any lakes or Chinese girls in the story.

Nicole Kidman, as it’s well-known, appears in the show doing her bit for Oz TV… a very odd bit. She’s a married woman who has discovered late in life she prefers to be a grumpy lesbian. Apparently lesbians aren’t allowed to go into hairdressing salons  and get a decent hairstyle – or maybe she goes to the same place as David Wenham?  She has that permanent “finger stuck in a power socket” look. Maybe it’s a result of having to listen to Keith Urban writing songs all time?

I hung in there and watched it through to see who killed the not-Chinese prostitute… and I still don’t know. The storyline kind of whimpered into nothing (a bit like Moss’s character). If anyone can tell me who murdered who, I’d appreciate letting me know in the Comments.

Talking of murdering, I’ve mapped out my next horror book. It’s about a school reunion – except one of the classmates who rolls up has been dead for years. Looking forward to writing new stuff again.

By the way, if you want to try any of my audiobooks, I’ve revamped the website page here. And in a few days my books will be available “wide” again at iBooks, Kobo and so on. I’ll be adding links.

Top Of The Lake is Starting to Sink

Top Of The Lake

Don’t you hate it when you’re watching a good TV drama that you’ve been enjoying and suddenly it turns into this kind of “what the fuck?” show?

I’ve been watching an ABC (Australia) drama on Sunday nights called “Top Of The Lake”. It’s a little confusing who made this show – the BBC, ABC and someone in New Zealand all have a hand in it, and it’s actually filmed somewhere near Queenstown on the South Island of NZ. Jane Campion gets all the producer’s kudos while the main actress is Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men).

It was going okay until the most recent (fifth of six) episode. It’s like the show’s writers or maybe the producers got lazy when it comes to credibility – and that pisses me off. So far, it’s about finding a pregnant 13 year old teenager who is missing, probably dead, in Deepest Darkest New Zealand Rain Forest and bringing to justice whoever is responsible. Lots of nasty relatives look likely, there’s a bunch of permanently angry, weirdo lesbians and female sex addicts in a commune who oddly insist in frolicking naked in freezing rivers, and the local police are possibly corrupt and – in the case of David Wenham’s character – at least guilty of acting with all the dynamics of a cardboard box. But okay, that’s Wenham’s thing.

For me the wheels began to fall off when our heroine and hero, Detective Robin Griffin (Moss) and her rough bit of shag, Johnno, decide to jump in a kayak and follow a suspicious dude paddling down the lake. This guy’s miles away, right? And for those who don’t know, these lakes and the surrounding mountains in NZ are huge and very, very wild. This is finding a needle in an enormous, wet and rugged haystack. Still, our intrepid duo manage to easily find not only the (hidden) kayak of the suspicious dude, but Johnno nearly catches him – he fails.

So what do they do next? What anyone else would do apparently – they have a shag in the middle of Deepest Darkest New Zealand Rain Forest. Not just a quickie knee-trembler against a nearby tree, it’s the full-on, get-all-your-gear-off bonking on the forest floor.

Folks, this is NZ, the south of the South Island in winter-ish weather. It’s FUCKING FREEZING. No wonder Johnno jumped on top. It must have been like laying down on the floor of a Woolworths meat freezer after all the lamb chops had fallen off the shelves.

Then, despite this all happening in the remote parts of Deepest Darkest New Zealand Rain Forest, two scumbag-type blokes appear out of nowhere and try to film the naked, shagging couple with a mobile phone. Supposedly they have a Scumbags-R-Us YouTube account. Like… what? Where the fuck did these guys come from? A fight ensues, Johnno gets the phone off them while Robin scares them away by shooting a few trees (she’s a detective with a gun, remember), but not before Johnno gets badly knifed in the groin (serves him right for picking fights naked). Do they jump back in the canoe and paddle to help? No, apparently it makes better sense to walk (on a buggered groin) Rambo-style through the impenetrable forest and freezing rivers to eventually arrive at the angry lesbian/hippy commune. Hmm…

Here, while Johnno’s get stitched up by women barely containing either their unbridled lust or their man-hatred for his rude bits, it’s discovered the mobile phone has a video of the missing, pregnant girl in the forest – kind of proving she’s still alive. Everyone celebrates by drinking gallons of champagne and passing the phone around for a look. For fuck’s sake, anyone who’s ever seen any kind of police procedural show – even Noddy Visits Mr Plod – knows that phone is suddenly a prime and vital piece of evidence. But hell, don’t worry, let’s pass it around a bunch of drunken, permanently angry lesbians and sex addicts for a few hours before handing it in for evidence. Shouldn’t be an issue…

The final scene is Elizabeth Moss (the detective) bursting into tears supposedly because the missing girl is alive. Most likely, I suspect, it’s with relief because she’s finally reached the end of this ridiculous episode.

I’ll watch next week, which is the final episode (there are rumours of a sequel) to see if Top Of The Lake redeems itself. And I might catch another glimpse of Elizabeth Moss naked again – maybe shagging on top of Mount Cook or inside a party ice machine.