Most critics are firmly behind Top of the Lake. The reviews describe a slow, atmospheric crime story set in an isolated New Zealand community, and nearly all of them treat the landscape as part of the drama rather than a backdrop. Jane Campion’s direction is praised for its control, and her long-standing interest in the friction between men and women is seen as the spine of the series. Elisabeth Moss is singled out in almost every notice, with several calling her detective the anchor of the whole thing; Peter Mullan draws praise too.
The spread is narrow. Six of the seven reviews land somewhere between good and excellent, and the reservations are mild: a few remark on the oddness of the pacing and the Twin Peaks echoes without quite counting them as faults. The one mixed notice comes from The Guardian, which likes the lead and the bones of the story but finds the dialogue in the women’s commune odd and hard to believe.