Top Of The Lake climbs the Peaks as Hollywood names deliver for the BBC

By Jim Shelley

PUBLISHED: 17:01 EST, 13 July 2013 | UPDATED: 07:11 EST, 14 July 2013

Top of the Lake was a superbly distinctive, disturbing piece of drama.

Mind you, given the track record of some of the names involved in it, this was the only predictable thing about it.

An ambitious, unsettling BBC production, it was co-written and directed by Oscar winner Jane Campion (The Piano) and starred Holly Hunter (The Piano, Crash), Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) and the ever intense Peter Mullan (The Fear, Tyrannosaur).

So basically we knew it was never going to be like Heartbeat.

It was a mixed night for the New Zealand Tourist Board.

On the one hand, South Island, one of the most spectacular locations in The Lord Of The Rings, looked stunning and was shot by Campion as a constant presence.

On the down side, the story focused on the type of savage, misogynistic, lawlessness we've seen in other Antipodean work such as Warrior, Underbelly, Jack Irish and, um, Lawless.

At times, Campion contrasted the tranquility and blue beauty of the lake with the barren outback and the violent amorality of the people living there.

But even the lake had a sense not just of mystery but menace.

In the beautiful first scene, we watched a young girl called Tui cycle across the dusty landscape, past the farms and horses, then take her coat off and walk into the lake, as if contemplating suicide.

Later on, Mullan as Matt Mitcham - drug dealer and head of the local family of thugs - casually pushed a man who had crossed him into the lake, killing him by towing him through the water while he clung on to a life belt.

With his outlaw's jacket and wild long hair, Mullan achieved the not inconsiderable accomplishment of looking even more psychotic and quixotic than usual.

Top of The Lake has been compared to Twin Peaks principally because it concerned child protection specialist Robin Griffin - played by the wan, contained Elizabeth Moss (Peggy from Mad Men) - maintaining the recent tradition of female detectives like Sarah Lund in The Killing struggling against a strange, closed community to discover who had made the 12 year-old Tui pregnant and investigate her disappearance.

Tui turned out to be Mitcham's daughter and had spent the night at a local commune for abused women on 'Paradise', the land which Mitcham claimed belonged to his family and had been sold by Bob Platt, the man he had drowned.

Tui had left early the next morning to go home and feed her beloved chihuahua.

The best and most sinister scene was Robin's first encounter with the erratic, complex criminal, who was now looking after Platt's dog.

'She was hungry so I took her in. No dog should go hungry,' he told Griffin in Mullan's own gruff Scottish growl, before asking her if she wanted to have it.

When she said 'no', he shot the dog in front of her.

As she was leaving, he softened just as suddenly.

'It's good what you're doing. Helping my daughter,' he told her. 'She's in a tough spot. Just understand one thing. No one loves her more than me. No one.'

In the car afterwards, Griffin looked at the piece of paper on which Tui had written the name of the baby's father, and the words 'No One.'

The whole time he'd been speaking to her, Mitcham had Tui's Chihuahua on his lap, stroking it.

The comparison with Twin Peaks was not unreasonable but not as yet fully deserved.

As the first of the six episodes finished, the tension was building nicely as Griffin was forced to confront her past with characters like Johnno, Tui's half-brother.

The odd atmosphere.was intriguing but unlike David Lynch's masterpiece, themes like the clash between the women on the commune and the 'alpha males' of the Mitchams or the misogynistic relics in the police, weren't exactly subtle.

Some of the 'strangeness' was affected without having Twin Peaks' humour.

A scene in which one woman recovering in 'Paradise' explained her background was one exception.

'My story is quite bad,' she told Mitcham. 'I had this chimpanzee called Brad. We were very close. We slept together and we bathed together... Brad became very difficult to handle. He became very possessive.. Eventually I had him castrated. Finally he attacked my best friend. Brad had to be killed... I'm pretty much a mess.'

Not the kind of speech you hear every day. No wonder Matt Mitcham looked alarmed.

Holly Hunter also stood out as the commune's guru, walking around with waist-length silver hair, staring at the sky, looking like a creature from Star Wars or 'a racoon' as Mitcham called her in.

At times, Mullan and Hunter seemed to be having a face-off over who could have the scarier hair.

'She is in a different mental state, Some people say she's enlightened but that's quite old fashioned really,' explained one of her disciples.

G.J's philosophies ranged from the cranky to the profound.

'Love that's not reciprocated turns into apathy or hatred,' she told the women. 'You become completely disillusioned. Then the truth begins to express itself,'

Tui asked G.J: 'what happened to you ?'

'A calamity. It was as if I was hit by lightning. Every cell of my body changed.'

'How come you're still alive ?' the child asked.

'I don't think I am. I'm a zombie,' G.J said.

When she asked Tui what had happened to her, she shyly showed her the ultra-sound of her baby, saying: 'I can't handle my dad.'

'You've got a time-bomb in there,' G.J urged her. 'Boom ! It's going to go off. Are you ready kid ?'

There's no doubt any viewers who saw Top Of The Lake would have believed her. Unlike Tui, they would avidly be waiting for more.