Top of the Lake: China Girl: Top of the Genre

My wife and I saw all six episodes of Top of the Lake: China Girl on Sundance last night.  It was that good.  The first season a few years back took a little longer, and not just because it had seven episodes.  It was compelling and memorable, but meandered down side stories a little too often.  In contrast, China Girl was even more compelling, and tight as a drum in its complex, multi-tiered plot.

Elisabeth Moss is back as Robin Griffin, a detective with a palette of smarts, passions, and vulnerabilities like none you've ever seen on television (I guess Gillian Anderson as Stella Gibson in The Fall would be about the closest, but even she is figuratively as well as literally continents apart from Robin).   Robin's back in Sydney from her visit in season 1 to New Zealand, this time to investigate the death of a prostitute who turns out to have been part of a surrogate mother ring.  Robin's personal life is woven in perfectly - which is to say sometimes harrowingly, sometimes lovingly - into the plot, including her 17-year old daughter last seen by Robin shortly after she was born.  Moss's performance is incandescent.

Her police partner is a nice surprise - Miranda Hilmarson played by Gwendoline Christie from Game of Thrones, with Christie showing a much greater gamut of acting talent than she did on Thrones.  Robin and Miranda are a complicated, ultimately powerful team, alternately screaming at and consoling each other, and one of the best scenes in this series is the two of them sitting on a dock, coming to terms.

There are paucity of really worthwhile men in this story - I'd say maybe one and a half - with the majority being liars, psychos, sleazes, and killers.  But that's the story, the scoundrels are very well acted, and some of the women are close to despicable and well acted, too, including Nicole Kidman (with grey hair) as the adoptive mother of Robin's daughter.

The plot contains all kinds of twists, some sudden, some long and dangling, and I'd rate these six hours as among the best ever on television.  Kudos to Jane Campion who wrote and created this.

My List of the Top 10 Television Series of 2016

Continuing the tradition - just started last year - here is my Top 10 list for 2016,  from who knows how many series I've seen this past year on network television, cable, and streaming (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Acorn):

Honorable mention (narrowly not making the list, for a variety of reasons):  On the list last year: Rectify concluded its run this Fall, and although it was still excellent and unique in many ways, some of the episodes lacked the intensity of the earlier seasons.  The Affair has just begun a new season on Showtime, and so far it's too soon to know if this will be another Top 10 season.   Returning in honorable mention: Chicago Fire is still superb, but still suffers from the limitations of network television.  Nordic noir:  Case, The Department Q Trilogy, Dicte - all outstanding, subtitled Scandinavian police drama that almost made the list.  Apples and oranges: Veep is hilarious, but it's impossible to rank a comedy with dramas, so I put it here in honorable mentions. Closest runner-up: The Fall's third season (BBC, streamed on Neflix) was its best yet for this sociopathic crime drama, with an Emmy-worthy performance by Gillian Anderson.

And now the Top 10:

10. Designated Survivor (ABC TV):  The only network series on my Top 10, which says how far cable and streaming have surpassed traditional network TV in the U.S.  But Designated Survivor is a worthy exception, in effect a blend of 24 and House of Cards - or Jack Bauer in the White House. Fast-paced, dangerous, and unafraid to address current controversial political issues.

9. Vikings (History Channel):  Moving up from honorable mention last year to #9 on my list this year, Vikings is superbly rendered historical drama.   What and how the Vikings managed to conquer is fascinating just as straight history, but this series brings these stories alive with unforgettable characters and breathtaking battle scenes.

8. Colony (USA Network):  Near-future Los Angeles under totalitarian alien control - aliens from outer space not other countries - debuted in 2016.  A taut, excellent mix of action and intelligent political philosophy.

7. House of Cards (Season 4) (Netflix): Back on the list, down one notch, but that's because of the tougher competition, not because of any loss of quality.  Frank and Claire Underwood remain brilliant templates of American Presidential politics and governance, becoming less hyperbolic and more in tune with our reality with every passing year, and not because House of Cards is changing.

6. Narcos (Season 2) (Netflix): We streamed seasons 1 (2015) and 2 (2016) in 2016, and loved them both.  Irresistible, brutal (how's that for a combination) docu-drama about Colombian drug-lord Pablo Escobar.

5. 19-2 (Acorn).  This is among the best beat-cop shows ever on television.  All three seasons are streaming on Acorn, with Season 3 first airing in the summer of 2016.  Originally a French-Canadian series, my wife and I enjoyed the English version so much we'll probably see the French sooner or later too. Indelible characters.

4. Travelers (Netflix).  Ok, I love science fiction, but I especially love time travel.  I said in my review of this Canadian series, now streaming on Netflix, that it was in some ways as good as 12 Monkeys.  Now that it's settled in, I think it's even better.  The thing is, Travelers starts out very slowly, so much so that I wouldn't have kept watching if I didn't have an insatiable interest in time travel stories.  But Travelers gets better very quickly, and the last four episodes are pure, incandescent genius.

3. The Girlfriend Experience (Starz): Both a lawyer and a call-girl show, and a gem of a drama.  The "girlfriend experience" gives the customer not just sex but a girlfriend for the rented time, and the situations this engenders make for an outstanding portrayal of life in the fast lane.

2.  Westworld (HBO): There's going to be more science fiction this year than last year.  I am indeed a science fiction fan (as well as author), but these series were extraordinary, and should be very appealing to everyone who doesn't dislike science fiction.  In the case of Westworld, it was a very close second to The Man in the High Castle, offering the best depiction of the profound issues in human-like artificial intelligence I've ever seen on television or in the movies.  (Humans was #9 on my list last year - its new season will be on in 2017.  I found Westworld better than Humans, as good as it was.)

1. The Man in the High Castle (Season 2) (Amazon):  This was #1 on my list last year, and this year's episodes were even better.  Goes well beyond Philip K. Dick's masterful novel in intelligent, relevant, vivid, and riveting ways.   And speaking of relevant, never more so, given the support President-elect Trump received from white supremacists in the recent election.

See also My List of the Top Ten Television Series of 2015

The Fall Season 3: Delving into Homicide

I binge-watched The Fall Season 3 on Netflix this week, and found it superbly disturbing and brilliant, the best of the three seasons.  [Big spoilers follow.]

The story in all three seasons pits Stella Gibson, brought into Belfast to investigate serial killings done by Paul Spector, who seems like the sweetest guy in the world. Both parts are played to perfection - by Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan - and Anderson's performance is one of the most powerful I've ever seen on any television or movie screen.

There's plenty of action, but what makes this series special are the deeper moments of contemplation and reflection.  Gibson nails her suspects, at last, at the end of the second season, but the match of wits continues and escalates in the third season, as Spector evinces amnesia, presumably brought on by the trauma of his capture, which nearly kills him.

Is he feigning or really suffering a memory loss, which would make his prosecution in court much more difficult.   Gibson is sure he's feigning, the medical and psychology staff - and we the audience - are not so sure.

The doctors in intensive care, Spector's nurse in particular, are correctly devoted to bringing this monster back to full health.  The head of psychiatric facility to he's brought wants only to find the truth of what's going on now in Spector's brain.

This of course is connected to what went on in his brain before.  I've seen many examinations of the homicidal mind on television and in cinema over the decades, but never as breathtakingly chilling as in this third season of The Fall.   It's a trip that Joseph Conrad, who explored insanity in a different context in Heart of Darkness, would have enjoyed, if that's the right word.

Spector's outburst - in which he physically beats Gibson after an interrogation which puts him in a corner and strips his soul bare (the police have linked him to a killing which took place before his amnesia-blanked years) - is both shocking and instantly totally believable in retrospect, a winning combination in a narrative moment.   Not so believable is why Spector would not have been put in a padded cell somewhere after that, rather than back to the psychiatric unit where he does even more damage, and that's the biggest flaw in in this otherwise flawless story.   But that story is so riveting and convincing and horrifying that it easily survives as a masterpiece despite the flaw.

Word on the web is that Stella Gibson may well return in a 4th series created, written, and directed by Allan Cubitt.  The supporting characters - such as Spector's attorney Aidan McCardle (Loxley on Mr. Selfridge) - are excellent.  I'll be watching for sure.