![]() ![]() Within the tight-knit rural community, which was deeply suspicious of outsiders, the hatred and subjugation of women had coagulated at every level, to the point where Robin’s boss, Detective Sergeant Al Parker (David Wenham) was revealed to be not only a rapist but also the mastermind of a ring of underage prostitutes.īut in China Girl, set in the much larger city of Sydney, the show’s continued presentation of men as rapists, pimps, cheats, and murderers is so committed it starts to become comical. “Are you a feminist? Are you a lesbian?” a drinker in the local bar asks Robin early on, before expounding on the sexual superiority of Thai women. The primary antagonist in the show is misogyny, which seemed to have infected Laketop so perniciously in the first season that even an all-women retreat run by the enigmatic GJ (Holly Hunter) couldn’t endure it. In China Girl, Robin is back in Sydney, four years later, investigating the death of a woman whose body was dumped into the ocean in a suitcase, and who appears, against all odds, to be linked to the daughter Robin gave up for adoption 18 years ago. Throughout her investigation, personal and professional concerns became increasingly entangled: The case required Robin to revisit her own sexual assault in high school she was drugged and assaulted again by a colleague and a primary suspect in the disappearance was revealed to be her real father. The first series saw Robin (Moss), a Sydney detective, tasked with finding a missing girl while visiting her hometown. Set against this much more conventional backdrop, the holes in Campion’s detective story are clearer, but the story and the dialogue have been heightened to the point of absurdist theater, as if to compensate. It’s by no means the only issue with the series. The characteristic obsessions are all there-motherhood, misogyny, self-actualization-but removing them from the context of South Island’s dramatic scenery has somehow neutered their narrative potential. Set around Sydney’s Bondi Beach, the six-hour drama feels unmoored by its new location. ![]() When a show is so anchored by its topography, it’s hard to imagine what it might look like elsewhere-picture Twin Peaks set in Panama City, or The Killing in San Diego.īut that’s about what happened with Top of the Lake: China Girl, Campion’s follow-up, currently airing over three nights on Sundance TV in successive two-hour installments before it heads to Hulu. The vast mountains looming over yellow fields put the eerie, even surreal behavior of Laketop’s inhabitants in the right kind of frame. Top of the Lake, the 2013 miniseries by Jane Campion about a female detective (Elisabeth Moss) investigating a missing, pregnant 12-year-old, was set in the fictional remote town of Laketop, New Zealand, and much of the series’s power came from its bleak, otherworldly landscape. Even a simple production change can make a difference: The X-Files, transplanted from filming in dreary Vancouver to sunny Los Angeles in its sixth season, suddenly saw all the myriad possibilities of alien comedy and adjusted its tone accordingly. The languid moodiness of True Detective’s first season, mired in the mystic culture and history of rural Louisiana, looked more like lumpy, peyote-swigging fan fiction when the show was rebooted in exurban California a year later. Strange things can happen when television shows move from one locale to another. ![]()
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