Grimmer than a wet weekend in Scunthorpe
At 50, Hollywood ice queen Nicole Kidman is enjoying a fruitful new chapter in her career, playing mother figures on TV. She was Emmy-nominated this spring for her stunning turn as a defiant domestic abuse victim in HBO’S Californian drama Big Little Lies.
In Top of the Lake: China Girl
(BBC Two), Kidman has donned grey corkscrew curls and floaty kaftans to play a second-wave Australian feminist who “went to the UK to study under Germaine Greer”. Or, as one hostile male less charitably put it, a woman who “wanted to shake her titties at the world”.
This was the six-part sequel to writer-director Jane Campion’s bleak but acclaimed 2013 crime thriller. Former Mad Men actress Elisabeth Moss – who’s also been battling the patriarchy in The Handmaid’s Tale – is reprising her role as Detective Robin Griffin, arriving back in her native Sydney to search for the daughter she gave up for adoption 17 years ago.
Now a troubled teen (played by Campion’s daughter Alice Englert), she was rebelling against her adoptive parents in this first episode and worryingly in thrall to her much older boyfriend Puss (Swedish actor David Dencik) – a sleazy academic (or was he?) with links to a brothel where a young sex worker had disappeared.
When the prostitute’s body washed up on Bondi beach in a suitcase, Robin embarked on an investigation which will, as these cases invariably do, lead closer to home than she could ever have expected.
We witnessed the ingrained misogyny of both the police force and the brothel’s appalling clients. Griffin screamed in her sleep and bristled aggressively when asked about her past. Everyone hinted at dark secrets which will doubtless involve men being ghastly.
It was all terribly enigmatic and self-consciously arty. Dialogue was spare and mumbled. Piano motifs plinked and plonked. However, this shouldn’t necessarily be mistaken for substance or profundity.
When it comes to crime drama cliché, troubled female cops are the new troubled male cops. Griffin’s gawky, puppyish sidekick Miranda (Gwendoline Christie, aka Brienne Of Tarth from Game of Thrones) was the only even vaguely likeable character. The whole thing was grimmer than a wet weekend in Scunthorpe and equally enjoyable.
Doubtless this will get rave reviews elsewhere and provoke worthy thinkpieces. I’ll even give it the benefit of the doubt by presuming the plot threads will eventually intertwine to become more compelling. On the evidence of this ploddingly oppressive opener, though, Top of the Lake needs to up the pace and dial down the self-indulgence.
Actor and comedian Adil Ray – best known for execrable sitcom
Citizen Khan but most recently seen in soapy school drama Ackley
Bridge – was the latest celebrity to shin up his family tree in Who Do You
Think You Are? (BBC One).
Ray’s mother Nargis came to Birmingham from the newly independent Kenya in 1967 and married a Pakistani labourer. It meant that Ray self-identified himself as “a mix of Pakistani, African, Muslim and Brummie”.
He headed to east Africa to find out more, tracing his lineage to Uganda. He heard tales of railways clerks, mosque builders, teen brides and one-eyed warriors. He met relatives for the first time in the traditional kingdom of Buganda and investigated a rumoured link to royalty.
Ray was thrilled to discover it was all true and he was indeed descended from a powerful chieftain who stood up to the European explorers. “It’s ridiculous but fantastic,” laughed Ray.
More rawly emotional were revelations about the prejudice faced by his grandmother Aisha, who tried to straighten her Afro hair to fit in with the Asian community, and discovering that his great-grandmother Razia had her children forcibly taken away by her Asian in-laws. Ray choked back tears as he heard how Razia later visited them in secret, just to hold their hands in silence.
Once again, this fiendishly engaging format delivered an absorbing, affecting hour’s viewing. Ray’s comic persona as self-appointed community leader Mr Khan might be grating, but here he showed the articulate and likeable performer behind it.
“I feel lucky that Kenya, Uganda, Pakistan and England are all of my house,” Ray concluded. “It’s a reminder that you really don’t know who you are until you find out what you were.” Which might well be a slogan for this consistently watchable series.
Top of the Lake: China Girl ★★ Who Do You Think You Are?★★★