Top of the Lake · Season 1 · BBC Two / Netflix
Top of the Lake Season 1
Top of the Lake Season 1 is a MUST-WATCH, BollyMeter 9.0/10. 6 episodes on BBC Two / Netflix from 18 March 2013.
Updated
What BollyAI Thinks
Jane Campion's six-episode debut series premiered on Sundance Channel on March 18, 2013 and arrived in the UK on BBC Two in July. The Metacritic consensus called it 'impressionistically structured' and praised Campion and co-director Garth Davis's use of New Zealand's landscape as active emotional texture rather than backdrop. The New Yorker described it as 'a moody, impressionistic portrait of a strange New Zealand town' that dismantled detective genre conventions from the inside.
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The Room
“With a great cast and bizarre characters set against a dramatic New Zealand backdrop, the miniseries is one that will stick with you.”
Collider“There's artful stillness and palpable sadness in almost every frame, and the collective performances are firmly must-see territory.”
Common Sense Media
Standout Episodes
The hours worth arguing about - premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.
- E1Paradise Sold8.5
The premiere establishes Laketop's landscape and its silences - a pregnant 12-year-old wading into a freezing lake, a detective with unfinished business returning home. Campion's framing refuses urgency in favour of dread, letting the New Zealand mountains bear the weight of what the community won't say.
The moment: Tui walks into the lake - a scene that sets the show's entire moral and visual register in under two minutes.
Full review of E1 → - E6She's Gone9.0
The finale delivers the investigation's conclusion without the catharsis a conventional crime drama would provide - which is the point. Robin's case closes, but the community's rot remains, and the show argues that justice and resolution are rarely the same thing.
The moment: The final image of Robin is one of the most quietly devastating endings in crime television of the 2010s.
Full review of E6 →