Top of the Lake (TV Series) Paradise Sold (2013) User Reviews

Episode 1

[bobcobb301 · 6/10 · 9 July 2017]

Early on you could get a sense of why this show would win awards and be sort of a cult favorite.

But you could tell it would take time. Even as someone who watches a lot of Australian and New Zealand TV and listens to plenty of music from the region, it is still a little of a culture shock to watch the show.

That being said, my bigger issue is that it is sort of by the book with the good guys and bad guys here, and not much originality in the characters.

Elisabeth Moss did a decent job with the accent and she's great in everything she does so that's reason enough to keep watching.

It was a solid start, not a particularly noteworthy one though.

Really disappointing

[markfranh · 5/10 · 17 March 2016]

Jane Campion must live in a depressing world where all women are victims of male brutality as that is the way this first episode came across.

Tui is a victim. That is made clear 5 minutes into the episode.

All the women in the container camp are victims. That is the point of their being there after all.

Robin's mother is a victim in a violent relationship where she makes excuses for the behaviour of her partner.

Even late in the episode, we find out (no surprise by now) that even Robin is a victim at some time in her past.

The men in this episode are -- with only one exception -- all total jerks capable of violence and disgusting behaviour with little provocation. No need to go into details as this is self-evident from watching.

The one exception was the character Johno. And by his own admission he is only now the way is his for getting all the badness out of his system after spending 8 years in a Thai prison.

Apparently until men are locked up for 8 years they are all violent insensitive beasts looking for any excuse to assault the female of the species.

There is one amusing twist to this. One of the women at the camp recounts a story where she is the victim of a bad relationship in which she ends up showing a scar where her partner bit her. Her partner? A chimpanzee obviously. I don't recall that it was specified but no doubt the chimpanzee was male.

My wife and I discussed this episode and decided we didn't want any part of this world so have decided not to bother with the rest of the series. The scenery and cinematography are great, as you'd expect. However, we live a few hours drive from Queenstown where the series was filmed so will content ourselves with visiting the venue rather than having to sit through another 7 hours of this depressing world that Campion is portraying.

Sorry, it's just not for us.