"Top of the Lake" TV series Episode 6 review

Things I have learnt in this episode:

• Don't piss off a heavily pregnant teenager brandishing a rifle.
• New Zealanders will swim in any weather (e.g. hippies in moonlit icy lakes, teenagers in mountain streams).Was Campion holding a gun to the poor buggers' heads?
• Detective Al Parker (David Wenham) is as crooked as the roads around Laketop.
• Bjork made fantastic music (cover version of "Joga" sung in the Paradise funeral/concert scene)

2 questions:
How come there's snow-covered slopes in some shots and green peaks in other shots?
What about Bob Platt's kinky sex party photos?

The finale should be a doozy. The spectacular clifftop fall will take some beating. But everyone saw the old switcheroo coming, didn't they.
Hope the bikers are still in town.

Location filming:
I'm assuming Glenorchy doubled for Laketop (as it is 'at the top' of Lake Wakatipu) and Queenstown (about 40 km south) was used for the more urban areas (police HQ, coffee shop, Parker's house).

"Top of the Lake" TV series Episode 1, Episode 2 review

I have watched the first two hours of "Top of the Lake". I've avoided reviews. I have seen only one Jane Campion film. I thought "The Piano" (1993) was beautifully filmed, impeccably acted, but full of unsympathetic characters and a bit of a moody wank.
"Top of the Lake" so far is .... beautifully filmed, impeccably acted, but full of unsympathetic characters and a bit of a moody wank. No wonder ABC did not want to buy it for Australian free to air.

Granted the first scene with Arthurian tones, Tui silently gliding into the lake, was mesmerising. The Queenstown lakes district of New Zealand's South Island lends itself to this atmospheric stuff. In the NZ's South Island, even a crap photographer like myself, CANNOT take a bad photo. See above, this was out the hire car windscreen. It is so picturesque (or in Kiwi speak "Pucturisque").
Elizabeth Moss ("Mad Men") does a passable Australian accent, but the production is littered with Australian accents and only a few distinctively Kiwi ones. How come? Many of the actors are Australian, David Wenham, Robyn Nevin. The wonderful Peter Mullan (scary Scottish head of the crime family in Channel 4’s "The Fear") plays a scary Scottish head of a dodgy family.

'Paradise', the women’s refuge lead by head nutbag, Holly Hunter, provide much needed comic relief.  One women lived with a chimp, another one ploughs into the local pub, plonks $NZ 100 (about $A 80) on the bar with the line: “I need a f**k, I’ll be in Room 6, 7 minute job and I’m timing it”.

There was also a throwaway line about the local Austrian paedophile, some card chimes in “Does he have a cellar?

Ever been to the South Island? It is frigging cold, even in Summer. Yet the locals gents walk around bare-chested. We have hippy crones streaking in the meadows.

I will stick with this show because I want to find out where Tui is and who got her pregnant.

Another 5 episodes to go, no more naked old birds, please.