rallen-34923 Reviews

Top of the Lake (2013–2017)

Kiwis With Attitude

[4/10 · 19 July 2016]

Imagine the scene in the offices of the New Zealand Tourism Board.

"You know the one thing wrong with this country? Everyone here is too damn nice. It's just so boooring! Visitors aren't coming any more. We godda do something.

"Yeah, agreed, but what?"

"I bin thinking: what about a TV series showing we're really, really weird?"

"Nah, they won't buy it. They know we're too nice."

"No, wait. You remember that old film, what was it, 'Deliverance'? We'll base something on that. Bunch of inbred psychos in backofbeyondsville, throw in a bit of incest, murder, a few hippy lezzies, a detective with a troubled past but a heart of gold sorting it all out…"

"You could be onto something. Might just work…. (laughs) nah, they'll never commission it."

But they did.

Ingredients: a set of male characters who are either morally weak, sociopathic or with an IQ in single figures. A cast of female characters who are abused, long-suffering martyrs. Add some comic relief with a bunch of women in container homes kinda led by a kinda earth mother, mockingly characterized as living on crisps and liquorice allsorts and fantasizing about men with larger-than-average penises.

Plot: Psycho McPsychface, the patriarch of an isolated, family community, lives with his children, grandchildren (some of whom are possibly both) and a colony of feral attack dogs in the middle of nowhere. Named with leaden irony Paradise, this tranquil spot, disturbed only by the occasional pointless murder and the disappearance of a pregnant twelve-year old, is invaded by a commune of traumatized women trying to rediscover their inner souls in peace. They just happen to choose the favourite spot of a psychotic Scotsman, whose Mother is buried on the plot, and whose malice is matched only by his sentimentality – with hilarious consequences! No, not really – I don't think any of these things are funny, even in an ironic way. Which is the main reason for not liking this series, which is patronizing, callous and emotionally manipulative by turns.

But the scenery is really, really lovely. Perhaps I'll visit New Zealand with its great countryside and nice people anyway – and by the way they are mostly genuinely nice, and not a bit boring.

The Living and the Dead (2016)

Thomas Hardy meets Stephen King

[2/10 · 18 July 2016]

If you like the supernatural and Victorian gear you will very possibly love this series, but corsets, oil lamps and spooky goings-on leave me cold.

I was surprised to see that the co-creator of the brilliant Life on Mars was the guiding spirit behind this series. LoM was witty, thoughtful, satirical and sometimes laugh out loud funny, in a good way; but in the present series the ideas, and humour, are thin on the ground. Perhaps the writers reckoned that if they encouraged thought or laughter in their viewers, we might not take their absurd plot lines seriously enough.

The props and frocks department have done their stuff competently, but it is all too Tess of the Durbervilles without Hardy's talent for characterisation. We have seen the threshing machine and traction engines bringing modernity to a largely medieval English rural scene too many times before, for this to be anything but a tired rehash of work done better by other hands.

Someone must have believed that adding a ghost-busters theme to the usual mix is enough to lift the whole thing out of mediocrity. I have to report that they were mistaken.

Red Rock (2015–2020)

A plague on both your houses

[8/10 · 18 July 2016]

If this series had been made by the English, it would have been slammed for catering to all the worst stereotypes of the Irish. The only characters with any backbone are the women, who are divided into Lady Macbeths and Cordelias: determined and psychopathic (the matriarchs), or determined and saintly (the young ones). The men are with one or two exceptions simply weak. Driven by greed or just fecklessness, they lie and cheat to get out of current difficulties, with the inevitable result that they land themselves in worse problems.

There is a clear overall theme to the programmes so far (one to five): it is that old standby of desperate writers, Romeo and Juliet. For the Montagues and Capulets read the Kielys and the Hennessys. For Romeo read David Hennessy and for Juliet, Katie Kiely. Mercutio is Darren Kiely, who in the first episode is already comatose and dies by the end. A small change in Shakespeare's plot is that the dead lad is from Juliet's family not Romeo's, but otherwise this tired old boy-loves-girl-but-their-families-hate-each-other device is clearly destined to be flogged down the road for as far as it will stagger, together with variations on a theme of "Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!"

The series has just begun showing on BBC and iPlayer. My partner is unaccountably besotted with this series, so I guess I will have to watch it proceeding along its humourless way to the bitter end. I just hope for my sanity's sake that it picks up some wit or originality in the meantime.

NOTE ADDED AFTER EPISODE TEN: the series really has picked up as the writers (and actors) get into their stride. It's not exactly Brookside yet but it does hold a story-line very competently, and is not nearly so predictable as the first few episodes led me to fear.

ADDED AFTER EPISODE 40: OK I admit it, I am hooked. Just as you think the series is getting silly or boring, something happens to jerk you awake again. Upgraded to 8 out of ten. Ibsen it isn't, but who would want to watch Ibsen twice a week anyway.