Look. I really tried to like Jane Campion's new TV series TOP OF THE LAKE (a bad sign in itself as you shouldn't need to try) but I gave up after 50 minutes when I thought to myself "can I take another 5 episodes of this?".
It was beautiful to look at and the acting was excellent but the whiff of cordite that hangs over it from early 80s feminist battles is now very stale. Yes, there was a wry sense of humour in the feminist camp scenes but it was self-indulgence that predominated.
You know you're in trouble when EVERY SINGLE MALE in the series is, as one woman yelled at one point, "an Alpha sh**". All the male cops, the redneck family, even the Maori boyfriend of the dying mother - all violent, insensitive sh**s.
The world has moved on in writing for men as can be seen in the excellent portraits of sensitive and nuanced men we see in Nordic Noir dramas. This has started to trickle down to mainstream Brit drama like BROADCHURCH and THE FALL so there is no excuse for Campion's dinosaur sexual politics at this time.
The dialogue was functional at best and clunky most of the time especially when the story stopped to deliver a lecture on male selfishness which was the equivalent of the writer grabbing the audience by the lapels and delivering a loud and obvious harangue straight in the face.
When I lived in Australia (the closest I've ever been to New Zealand where TOP is set) they had a wonderful expression for something that smelled bad. It was "on the nose".
When I was learning to write dialogue from Americans such as Robert McKee they excoriated dialogue that was simply polemic or info-dump without subtext as "too on the nose" Now I can combine both origins and say, quite accurately, that Jane Campion's new series is "on the nose".
It was beautiful to look at and the acting was excellent but the whiff of cordite that hangs over it from early 80s feminist battles is now very stale. Yes, there was a wry sense of humour in the feminist camp scenes but it was self-indulgence that predominated.
You know you're in trouble when EVERY SINGLE MALE in the series is, as one woman yelled at one point, "an Alpha sh**". All the male cops, the redneck family, even the Maori boyfriend of the dying mother - all violent, insensitive sh**s.
The world has moved on in writing for men as can be seen in the excellent portraits of sensitive and nuanced men we see in Nordic Noir dramas. This has started to trickle down to mainstream Brit drama like BROADCHURCH and THE FALL so there is no excuse for Campion's dinosaur sexual politics at this time.
The dialogue was functional at best and clunky most of the time especially when the story stopped to deliver a lecture on male selfishness which was the equivalent of the writer grabbing the audience by the lapels and delivering a loud and obvious harangue straight in the face.
When I lived in Australia (the closest I've ever been to New Zealand where TOP is set) they had a wonderful expression for something that smelled bad. It was "on the nose".
When I was learning to write dialogue from Americans such as Robert McKee they excoriated dialogue that was simply polemic or info-dump without subtext as "too on the nose" Now I can combine both origins and say, quite accurately, that Jane Campion's new series is "on the nose".