Oh cinematic TV, you really are spoiling us. Top of the Lake, directed and co-written by Jane Campion, is as gorgeous as those arty trailers promised, turning New Zealand's Lord of the Rings scenery into a far more menacing landscape, all sinister mist and lazy sunshine, centred on a cerulean blue lake with the heart of a demon

Parents need to know that Top of the Lake centers on the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year-old girl who was the victim of statutory rape (an act that's discussed but not shown onscreen). Simulated adult sex acts include intercourse and oral sex, and bare buttocks are visible but no other sensitive parts are shown

In 2013, the Sundance Channel released a seven part miniseries entitled Top of the Lake starring Mad Men’s Elisabeth Top of the Lake PosterMoss. The series was the latest venture from writer/director Jane Campion, who is best known for her Oscar-winning work with the 1993 film, The Piano.

Golden Globe Won: Best Performance by an Actress in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television Elisabeth Moss

Awards and Nominations

Australian miniseries Top of the Lake has won the Emmy Award for outstanding cinematography at the ceremony in Los Angeles Sunday night.

The critically acclaimed Australian drama Top of the Lake has been nominated for a prestigious BAFTA television award. The nomination puts the Jane Campion drama, which starred Elisabeth Moss, David Wenham and Holly Hunter, up against the hit British crime drama Broadchurch, the working-class period drama The Village, and the comedy-drama My Mad Fat Diary.

After its two-part conclusion on Monday night, Top of the Lake seems imperfect, but so is life and so are the mountains in the show—they are wild, insisting on shapes of their own. The show was ragged, too, and the channel showing it was tattered yet strident. You could despair of those things, or begin to see them as part of the message. I don’t know whether Jane Campion selected this narrative autism in advance, or to what extent it was happenstance or mistake. But I cannot omit an estimate of what it felt like, on television.

Jane Campion is a surprisingly giggly woman, not at all what you'd expect from the New Zealand film-maker who made that beautifully restrained love story, The Piano, the poetic Bright Star, or the dankly erotic In the Cut. And her first foray into television, Top of the Lake, about the search for a missing 12-year-old girl, has moments of equally unexpected levity. It's slightly more Twin Peaks than The Killing.

With Tui alone in the woods, about to give birth, and locals finally willing to testify against Matt Mitcham, events charged towards an emotional climax in the final episode of Jane Campion’s ‘Top of the Lake’.

Last May I helped organize a conference in my university and after talking about our research fields I was recommended two TV shows for the crime lover in me: Top of the Lake (2013) and The Bletchley Circle (2012). One of the things that called my attention was that Top of the Lake was written and produced by Jane Campion whose movie The Piano changed something in non-sexist representation of women. So, as soon as I got home I got Top of the Lake and started watching it. Beware! This review contains some minor spoilers.

“You’re a long way from any help,” says a concerned mother to Robin Griffin, a big-city cop who’s investigating a crime in an idyllic New Zealand backwater in Jane Campion’s mini-series Top Of The Lake. “I am the help,” she replies.