Thanks for the memories!

Am I Missing Something?

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

First of all, what I'm writing relates to series 2 only. I haven't seen series 1 so cannot say if it's any different.The cast features a great many excellent actresses and actors. So for the life of me, I cannot understand why the performances are so weak or so wooden. Elizabeth Moss seems like she needs someone to give her firmer direction; Nicole Kidman, who I really like, overacts and seems to be on a different wavelength to the others in her scenes. The characters lost me as they are so psychitzophrenic. Robin can decide if she's a mean, ruthless detective or a meek victim from scene to scene, Mary is much the same and it's really hard to understand what the point of Miranda is. Some of the scenes feel like they've just been thrown in and the whole thing lacks coherence. The characters don't develop much and it takes a long time to not go very far. Spoiler ALERT: there is a scene where Robin is in a huge room but manages to get cornered by a disabled man in an electric wheelchair that has a speed of about half a mile an hour.. Not exactly the car chase from"Bullet".The last thing that bothered me is that it seemed to portray all the main male characters bar Pike as leches, abusers, cheats or chauvinists. I could live with that if there was a point behind it--even if I didn't enjoy it, but it just seems a cheap way to make Robin and Mary appear sympathetic despite them having few redeeming features.

This show is full of vulgarity, profanity and crude violence. Which is why so many people in our culture today like it. But for the rare few who have any decency left in there souls, this series is offensive and filthy. To bad they wasted such pretty location scenery. Like most writers today who can't really write, this one has to shock you with unnecessary sex, violence, and profanity to cover up the lack of a good story and intelligent dialogue. Take a look at the series "Trapped" if you want to see good writing and a great story line. It is SO much better than this.

I won't repeat the pertinent points already raised by other reviewers who hated Top of the Lake China Girl, but I want to add something I haven't seen anyone else mention, and that is that Puss/Alexander was just an amalgamation of G.J. and Matt from season one. This to me summarises how unimaginative and unoriginal the writing in China Girl was.

Just finished watching this series. I stuck it out because I was certain it would get better but it got worse and worse. The final insult was that the fate of the wounded police officer was just left hanging. Poorly written and often poorly acted. Long pauses, characters showing the wrong emotions for the events in which they were immersed, total police ineptitude mixed with classic misogyny at every turn. The lead detective seemed to operate at a very low level of skill. Add the fact that everyone kept weeping and the whole thing became divorced from the reality of policing. The story line was lazy and the political message was pushed on our faces with as much subtlety as a fart.