Top Of The Lake

 

There I was, the other day, struck by the thought that I hadn’t had Elisabeth Moss’s face in front of me on a big screen in a long time.  Mad Men was ages ago, and we are a while off another season of Handmaid’s Tale, though the memory of the excellence of series three is still a tingling sensation.  With recent government curbs on demonstration and their response to violence against women, we are another step closer to Gilead anyway, so we’ll all be blessing the fruit in no time.  Under his eye, indeed.  This brought me to click on Top Of The Lake on Netflix, a Moss-fronted drama that aired on the BBC back in 2013.  It looked rainy and gritty, promising some crimes perpetrated against a backdrop of luscious scenery and I felt safe in the knowledge I would have a strong performance from such a gifted actor in the lead role.

The first series is set in New Zealand, which is something I had somehow missed.  This isn’t Yorkshire (I was imagining Happy Valley vibes) but Lake Wakatipu at the bottom of South Island.  You can imagine my surprise, then, when Moss whips out a Kiwi accent.  It sounds decent to me, but from my perspective on the other side of the world, I realise I have no credibility to judge.  Moss plays Robin Griffin, returning to her home community from Sydney (which nicely covers an irregular vowel sounds anyway).  She’s in the police, sort of coming and going in a role to do with sexual assaults.  It’s hard to be sure if she’s on a working trip or not.  Her mum is unwell, but she almost ignores her to re-tread the paths of her own traumatic youth there, making it clear that she left for a very firm reason.  In a bit of a busman’s holiday, a local girl goes missing, and there are many suspicions of foul play, so Moss is in her element as the strong female and only capable police officer, dealing with an avalanche of male incompetence and insouciance as she tries to right the wrongs in her own community.

Before long, every character is a suspect, and this is because everyone is awful.  Unlikeable characters loom as large throughout as the spectacular scenery, but we are drawn in as Moss dashes in the drizzle from riddle to riddle.  There’s even a strange women’s commune set up beside the lake in shipping containers, riling some of the local populace but mostly sitting about drinking tea.  The climax gripped me with not only its gruesomeness, but its plausibility among a group of lakeside settlements who treat the most vulnerable in their society as expendable commodities.

Come 2017, the standalone conclusion is overturned as a second season appears.  The action has moved to Sydney, so our only point of continuity is Robin Griffin herself.  Still carrying the (additional) trauma of her previous lake-based experience, she now has new vulnerable girls to protect.  There are the South East Asian young women working in the licensed sex industry, branching out into further ways of selling their bodies.  There’s also the now-teenage daughter that Robin had given up for adoption.  She’s mixed up in these brothels, it turns out, rebelling against her adoptive parents (including a Nicole Kidman with little to do but have distracting hair) by pursuing a relationship with a vile German man who specialises in looking after stray cats better than he treats his sex workers.

Being strange throughout, Game Of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie is our cop partner, clashing with Robin in various ways, while we sort of wobble through a sequence of events to our climax.  The unlikability of everyone far exceeds series one’s motley crew of characters, and this made it a bit of a slog to get through.  Everything was gross, but not quite grotesque enough to be a reason to be compelled.  I stuck with it for the sake of dear Elisabeth, covering for patchier performances.  On many an evening, clicking next episode felt like more of a duty than a treat, especially in a world of so much else to watch (bonjour, Lupin).

While this might not sound like the strongest recommendation, Top Of The Lake is still important viewing.  As a slagger-off of TV despite never having produced any, I should confess I am deep in the Introduction To Screenwriting term of a part-time Creative Writing MA I am doing.  I think we can all agree the quality of my prose needs professional help.  I also have a new-found respect for anyone who writes anything on telly.  A fellow course-member (on Teams of course – I have never met these people) pointed out to us that Top Of The Lake is a great example of a female story structure.  I think this is part of feminist literary theory, but our hero’s treatment within the show follows a different arc to what we see in the hegemonic male stories of our culture.  This is all a bit academic so let’s focus on the easy bits.  This is a strong female character, leading storylines that make us question how women are viewed and treated by our societies.  It’s not pretty, but it’s more relevant than ever.

Flight Of The Conchords

If you’re anything like me, you might have asked yourself on multiple occasions why can’t all TV be musical.  Following on from last week’s post on Netflix’s Soundtrack (still a masterpiece) and a previous unpopular rant from me about what Glee did wrong (it’s here and needs more reads), we’re going back in time to look at one of the few boxsets that managed to be musical and cool at the same time.  I had nearly forgotten all about Flight Of The Conchords.  But, back in January, I was lucky enough to fill a spot with friends in a French ski chalet and found myself bombing around Tignes with some very advanced practitioners of winter sports.  So adept were they at swooshing down black runs, treating their inordinate speed with nothing but nonchalance, they had earned the right to annoy less stable alpinists by carrying speakers in their rucksacks and playing music out loud.  Older gentlemen do this a lot in lockdown London, cycling through crowded parks with loud beats emanating from their bicycles.  I’m not proud to say that we were equally anti-social, especially when it came to forcing others to endure prolonged exposure to us on various ski lifts and in their various queues.  As six adults in their thirties (four doctors, one commercial airline pilot, and me, someone who tits about in media partnerships) you may find our music choices challenging.  After exhausting the soundtracks of various Disney films, from Moana to Frozen, and reliving our youths with Tenacious D, our next source of musical accompaniment was Flight Of The Conchords.

I defy anyone not to appreciate the wanky Brit-abroadness of zipping down a sheer ice face in a busy French ski resort while singing along to Foux Du Fafa.

So let’s unpack the enduring appeal of these minstrels.  Firstly, Flight Of The Conchords, as themselves, are a New Zealand comedy music duo who’ve been active since 1998.  This blogpost is about the two series of their HBO New York-based sitcom that ran from 2007 to 2009.  I’m not sure if it was ever broadcast properly in the UK and, like my friends when it comes to sorting out our first meal in a restaurant since the start of lockdown, I’m not prepared to log onto the internet to do the appropriate research that would benefit everyone.  It was one of my many Belsize Park flatmates who must have brought home the DVDs probably around 2008, drunk on the swagger of unearthing early-adopted content to show to his co-renters.  Let’s not take this accolade away from him, as he remains a dear friend, going on to have two daughters with the wife he met in that very apartment, giving my life some value by virtue of me being the one who chose his future spouse off Gumtree.  It turns out, we only had the first season, but we would watch it over and over, and then listen to the CD soundtrack, also over and over.  The second series was something I only came across in 2020 on my Sky Q box, as it seems Sky Comedy have the rights.  I therefore peppered this into my regular viewing: new Rick & Morty, a fourth season of F Is For Family, lockdown-induced reruns of old Big Brothers and, er, Cruising With Jane McDonald.

Everybody, there is so much to love about Flight Of The Conchords.  Let’s start with our heroes, Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie.  Unlucky in love, they’re a kind of kiwi Peep Show pair, their strong accents only adding to the silliness as almost all of their vowel sounds get swapped around for the wrong ones.  The cheap appearance of the first season brings to life perfectly the absolute shitness of the Chinatown neighbourhood they inhabit on their shoestring budget.  Gainful employment comes in the form of a posting as the in-house band of New Zealand’s consulate, an organisation occupying the most depressing-looking office block in all of the five boroughs.  This premise sets up the perfect contrivance: as a band, they of course burst into song.

Only, they don’t really burst.  They slip.  They shimmy.  They irreverently and knowingly look down the camera lens, in on the joke that codifies their song: we’ve met a woman of average attractiveness (The Most Beautiful Girl (In The Room)), we’re laughing about the banality of long-term relationship sex (Business Time), we think we’re better than we are in reality at social gatherings (Prince Of Parties).  Their lyrics are often juxtaposed with reality, the whole thing packaged up with a heavily themed video, whether taking inspiration from Bowie or 90s rap.  In short, nothing takes itself seriously.  Why then, indeed, wouldn’t you have a Gallic number composed entirely of stock GCSE French expressions?  Cue titters as we all laugh about asking “Où est la piscine?” or saying “splish splosh” in a Parisian accent.  These silly songs are silliest when it comes to their catchiness.  Forgive me for only focusing on our first series here – it’s a familiar place for me, whereas the cameo-heavy second season, which seems on first watch to match its predecessor on song quality, has yet to get its claws into my short-term earworm faculties.

Alongside their failures with the ladies, Bret and Jemaine also fail to get anywhere with their music career.  This is often down to their manager, Murray (Rhys Darby), whose focus is the attendance register and agenda of band meetings at the expense of having a clue about anything else.  Nevertheless, their one and only (super) fan is on hand throughout: we have wide-eyed Mel played by Bob’s Burgers’ wonderful Kristen Schaal sporting an anorak and being, frankly, a pervert.  Fans of the anglophone world will also enjoy the long-running rivalry with their counterparts from the Australian Embassy, made all the more insulting by most Americans assuming our lads in the band are actual Australians.

For me, the only thing that has aged is the portrayal of New Zealand.  The country and its consulate are positioned as a running joke, with the Prime Minster himself acting the fool throughout his official visit and the ill-fated establishment of Newzealandtown (squashed between Chinatown and Little Italy).  In reality, New Zealand is fast earning international respect as one of the best countries.  Instead of being run by round blonde racist toddlers like the US and the UK, NZ has gone for a goddess who pursues welfare over growth, all while keeping a pandemic at bay.  Please may Jacinda Ardern take over Britain?  You may ask where I got that preposterous hypothesis.  Did Steve tell me that, perchance?  Mmmph, Steve.

Seriously, though.