If you’ve ever spent a rainy afternoon scrolling through streaming services, you’ve probably seen the haunting poster for Top of the Lake. Elizabeth Moss stands in the middle of a freezing New Zealand lake, looking like she’s carrying the weight of the entire world on her shoulders. It’s a striking image. But it doesn’t even come close to preparing you for the actual experience of watching Jane Campion’s masterpiece. Honestly, calling it a "crime show" feels like a bit of a lie. It’s more of an atmospheric nightmare that explores the darkest corners of the human psyche while looking absolutely beautiful.
Most police procedurals follow a comfortable rhythm. There is a body. There are clues. There is a resolution. Top of the Lake doesn't care about your comfort. It’s jagged. It’s weird. It’s frequently deeply uncomfortable. When it first aired in 2013, it felt like a shift in what television could be, bridging the gap between prestige cinema and the small screen long before "cinematic TV" became a marketing buzzword.
The Haunting Core of the Laketop Mystery
The story kicks off with a twelve-year-old girl named Tui Mitcham. She’s pregnant. She walks into the freezing waters of a mountain lake in Laketop, New Zealand, and then she disappears. Enter Detective Robin Griffin, played by Elisabeth Moss in a performance that basically redefined her career post-Mad Men. Robin is back in her hometown to care for her dying mother, but she gets sucked into the search for Tui.
What makes this drama Top of the Lake so distinct is the setting. New Zealand isn't just a backdrop here. It's a character. Campion uses the Southern Alps to make everything feel small and insignificant. The landscapes are vast, beautiful, and terrifyingly lonely. You get the sense that the mountains are keeping secrets just as much as the people living at their base.
Robin isn't your typical brilliant detective with a "gift." She’s traumatized. She grew up in this town, and returning there is like picking at an old scab. The show focuses heavily on the gender dynamics of this isolated community. It’s a hyper-masculine, rugged environment where women are often sidelined or outright abused. This isn't subtext; it’s the text.
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GJ and the Camp of Broken Women
While Robin is hunting for Tui, we get introduced to one of the strangest subplots in modern TV. A group of middle-aged women has set up a shipping container camp on a piece of land called "Mitcham’s Hope." They are led by GJ, a silver-haired, cryptic guru played by Holly Hunter.
Hunter is incredible here. She barely speaks, and when she does, it’s usually to tell someone that their problems are irrelevant or that they are "crap." This camp provides a bizarre, almost surreal counterpoint to the grit of the police investigation. It’s where the show gets its "weirdness" from. The women are there to heal, but they seem more like they’re just waiting for the world to end.
Matt Mitcham: A Villain for the Ages
You can’t talk about this show without talking about Peter Mullan as Matt Mitcham, Tui's father. He is terrifying. He runs the town through a mix of intimidation, drug dealing, and a weird, distorted sense of family honor. Mullan plays him with this quiet, simmering rage that makes you feel like the screen might actually explode. He represents the "old world" of Laketop—the one Robin escaped and the one that still holds the town in a death grip.
Why Season 2 Changed Everything
A few years later, we got Top of the Lake: China Girl. Most people were skeptical. How do you follow up that first perfect season? Campion moved the action from the wilderness of New Zealand to the urban sprawl of Sydney, Australia.
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It’s a totally different vibe. If season one was about the "wild," season two is about the "unseen." The plot revolves around a suitcase that washes up on Bondi Beach containing the body of a young woman. It dives deep into the world of illegal brothels, surrogacy, and the commodification of women's bodies.
Elisabeth Moss returns, and this time she’s joined by Nicole Kidman and Gwendoline Christie. Kidman is unrecognizable as Julia, the adoptive mother of the daughter Robin gave up for adoption years ago. The dynamic between Moss and Christie is one of the highlights of the series. Christie plays Miranda, a tall, awkward, and incredibly earnest police officer who becomes Robin’s unlikely partner.
The Polarizing Nature of China Girl
Honestly, some people hated the second season. They missed the mountains. They thought it was too bleak or too strange. But if you look closer, it’s doing something even more ambitious. It examines the "motherhood" theme from every possible angle—biological, adoptive, surrogate, and even the "mothering" of a crime investigation. It’s messy. It’s complex. It’s exactly what a drama Top of the Lake should be: unapologetic.
Realism vs. Stylization
One of the things critics like Emily Nussbaum or Matt Zoller Seitz have pointed out about Campion’s work is her ability to blend hyper-realism with dreamlike imagery. You’ll see a scene of brutal police questioning followed by a shot of the wind moving through the grass that feels like a poem.
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This isn't a show you watch while checking your phone. If you blink, you miss the subtle shift in a character's expression that explains their entire backstory. The pacing is deliberate. It’s slow-burn storytelling at its finest, demanding that the viewer sit with the discomfort.
Key Themes That Keep the Show Relevant
The show tackles topics that are even more relevant today than they were a decade ago. It deals with:
- The cycle of abuse: How trauma is passed down through generations in small communities.
- Institutional failure: How the police and social systems often fail the most vulnerable people.
- Female agency: The struggle to reclaim one's body and voice in a world dominated by men.
- Environmental symbolism: The idea that the land reflects the moral state of the people living on it.
How to Watch Top of the Lake Today
If you’re ready to dive in, you should know what you’re getting into. This isn't a "fun" binge. It’s heavy. But it’s also one of the most rewarding television experiences out there.
- Start with Season 1: It’s a self-contained story. Even if you never watch the second season, the first six episodes are a masterpiece of television.
- Pay attention to the sound: The sound design is incredible. The wind, the water, and the silence are all intentional.
- Watch with subtitles: The New Zealand accents (and some of the Australian ones) can be thick, and the dialogue is often whispered or muttered. You don’t want to miss the sharp, biting lines Campion wrote.
- Give it time: The first episode might feel slow. Let the atmosphere sink in. By episode three, you’ll be hooked on the mystery of what happened to Tui Mitcham.
Top of the Lake remains a high-water mark for the mystery genre. It proved that a crime drama could be about more than just a crime; it could be a profound exploration of what it means to be human in a broken world. Whether you're in it for Elisabeth Moss's powerhouse performance or Jane Campion's visionary direction, it’s a journey worth taking. Just don't expect to come out of it feeling the same way you went in.
Next, you might want to look into other "Southern Gothic" or "Tasmanian Noir" series like The Kettering Incident or The Gloaming if you find the atmosphere of the New Zealand wilderness compelling. If you're more interested in Elisabeth Moss's evolution as an actor, comparing her work here to The Handmaid’s Tale shows just how much DNA Robin Griffin shares with June Osborne. Both characters are defined by their resilience in the face of systemic oppression.
Final thought: If you're going to watch, do it on a big screen. The cinematography by Adam Arkapaw (who also did the first season of True Detective) is far too good to be wasted on a phone or tablet. The scale of the mountains and the depth of the lake are half the story.