Tales Of The Unexpected

Top of the Lake star Elisabeth Moss says we should savour every nuance of her latest project. The actress, who plays a detective in Jane Campion's drama on Sundance Channel, relishes the detail of a story that reveals itself, much like her character, in very unexpected ways...

It's a sun-soaked afternoon in Los Angeles, but Elisabeth Moss is shivering. Sitting in the back room at the Pikey on Sunset Boulevard, Moss recalls how cold the water was in New Zealand, where she filmed Top of the Lake, the hotly-anticipated miniseries created by Jane Campion that premieres Monday on the Sundance Channel. "The lake is the same temperature all year round: freezing," says Moss, wearing a loose white cotton dress, her short brown hair tucked neatly behind one ear. "My makeup artist had this black plastic bucket and they would fill it with hot water and I would go sit in it fully clothed to warm up."

It's an odd detail, but it's in keeping with the making of the moody crime drama, writes Jessica Gelt in the Los Angeles Times. Filmed over a five-month period against a staggeringly beautiful natural backdrop of soaring mountains, rugged bush and the omnipresent lake, the setting plays a natural foil to the darkness of the plot, driven by the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year-old named Tui. Moss plays a confused and hardened Sydney, Australia, cop who gets wrapped up in the case during a visit to her cancer-stricken mother.

The mystery reveals itself in unexpected ways during seven hour-long episodes. The length of the series allows delicate subplots to push to the surface, including the story of Paradise, a desolate refugee camp for lost, mostly menopausal women, silently lorded over by an enigmatic visionary named GJ, played by Holly Hunter. Then there's the taut drama surrounding Tui's father, a criminal named Matt Mitcham (Peter Mullan) who rules the town and its police through the sheer, rabid force of his violent will. "I think this is Jane's best work. She really thrived in the miniseries genre," says Moss. "It's in the details for Jane. It's all about the secondary characters, the locations and all the weird moments — all the extra things that make Jane a genius. If you cut it down to two hours you'd make an awesome detective story, but you'd lose all that great stuff."


Making a miniseries did, indeed, give her room to play, agrees Campion. "My favorite form is the novel," she says, "which I think adds up to six or seven hours of something beautiful. That's what I was trying to create." Campion recalls how watching the salty HBO drama Deadwood made her realize that modern television was the place for her. "I thought, 'My God, this is so brilliant, I can't believe someone in television is financing this,'" she says. "How wild, what a revelation!"

In contrast, another of the chief draws of the "terrific" Top of the Lake is knowing that it will actually end, thinks Maureen Ryan. Writing in the Huffington Post, she notes that it's not that you're likely to get sick of this atmospheric mystery tale, it's just that it isn't padded in contrived ways to fill out a 10- or 13-episode season. The story dictates the length, not the other way around. "There's a lot of talk these days about the future of television, and that's certainly something we need more of: Creators who figure out what they want to do and then find a format, a venue and a running time that make sense for the specific story they're telling," writes Ryan.

The premise of Top of the Lake is not terribly original, but Campion, who also wrote many of the episodes, puts her distinctive stamp on the miniseries' core ingredients. There's the missing child, a community full of secrets and a driven detective with a fiance she's largely forsaken, but the similarities to AMC's version of The Killing (thank the gods) more or less end there. "Actually, the pilot of the U.S. version of "The Killing" did a fine job of establishing a melancholy tone, an intriguing mystery and pleasingly ambiguous characters," admits Ryan. "The show ran off the rails soon after that, but Top of the Lake, which has a similarly moody start, only becomes more fascinating over time. That's not to say Top of the Lake is free of idiosyncratic digressions and the occasionally odd segue, but it does a critically important thing very well: It draws you into a specific world and it quickly makes that world's textures, relationships and stakes matter."

Moss plays Robin Griffin, who returns temporarily to her hometown, nestled in some of New Zealand's most gorgeous scenery. The workaholic Griffin does some consulting for the local police department between visits to her mother, and you get the impression that Griffin would rather be working a local missing persons case than dealing with family issues or her past. In this beautiful backwater, one clan seems to have cornered the market on thuggery and black-market activities, and as "Lake" unfolds, we learn about Griffin's connections to the rough Mitcham family and about the secrets that have kept her psychologically tethered to the close-knit town. As she gets more involved in a case involving a child, it doesn't take long for Griffin to meet G.J., the American guru who has set up a new commune for women on the edge of the town's lake.

Reactions to G.J. will likely be polarized, thinks Ryan, but Hunter's performance was one of the main draws for her. Her stillness in this role is impressive: G.J. mainly sits in a trailer and drinks coffee, and she occasionally issues blunt advice to her ragged flock in a clipped, distracted manner. Is Campion amused by or affectionate toward G.J. and her gaggle of strange, contradictory women? There's no concrete answer, but the ambiguous treatment of the lakeside encampment - puckishly or accurately called "Paradise" - is one of "Lake's" chief pleasures. Many of the women are fleeing difficult relationships. Griffin, meanwhile, is treated with casual condescension by fellow officers and has her own painful secrets, with a thick skin as a result. As Top of the Lake progresses, however, those barriers start to fall.

Television often tells stories involving oppression and violence, especially violence toward women and children, but it most often uses them to juice up a procedural formula or to launch a melodramatic cliffhanger. "It's rare for a television show to let the consequences of violence and assault play out in complex, nuanced (there's that word again) ways for both male and female characters," states Ryan. "Despite its relatively short running time, Top of the Lake does that. In fact, examining the effects of brutality on those who employ it and those who experience it appears to be one of the reasons for the miniseries' existence."

Campion's feeling that anything goes on the small screen translated to some genuinely brave directorial choices, particularly when it comes to the world of Paradise, the camp by the lake. Here the women live in empty shipping containers and there is a sense of weird, wind-swept desolation that easily conjures Twin Peaks comparisons. "TV is being written, directed and acted for adults," says Holly Hunter, addressing the strange world of the camp. "It's bringing complexity to a lot of different stories, characters and landscapes."

In the case of Paradise, that sense of richness and possibility plays out among women that Campion says are "probably the most unattractive group of women in the world": menopausal and post-menopausal. "But I'm one of them," she says. "And there's a lot of freedom to it. You skip out of all the conventional points of success. You're not hot, you don't have a hot body." Through Paradise we see the vulnerability and power of women, and Tui's disappearance becomes that much more upsetting. The evil embodied in the show, however, is as amorphous as the constantly shifting weather. "Even though there are people who do very bad things in Top of the Lake, those people still get a lot of humanity shined on them through Jane and Gerard Lee, her co-writer," says Hunter. "I think they both love people and they love all their characters."

It had been a long time since Campion had written with Lee, who she says was living on an island off Brisbane in Australia when she called on him to collaborate. His voice was vital because he could awaken the male point of view alongside her female point of view. Sexuality and sex roles are a bit murky, along with just about everything else in Top of the Lake. That's certainly true when it comes to Moss' Robin, who has held onto bleak secrets that have twisted her to hardened extremes. Thanks to her role as Peggy Olson on Mad Men, Moss knows a thing or two about infiltrating male-dominated worlds.

Although Griffin is quite different from Peggy - she's tougher and more physically brave - she shares that character's resilience and intelligence. As is often the case on Mad Men, Moss' role in Top of the Lake frequently requires her to react to others and to experience pain and regret in silence, and we know from five seasons of the AMC show that the actress is a master of those skills. She and the subtle David Wenham, who plays a local detective, are well paired; each actor innately understands the slightly hushed, realistic atmosphere Campion is trying to create. Griffin doesn't particularly want to be liked, but given who's playing her, it's impossible not to care about the toll this case begins to take on the detective.

Campion says Moss wasn't who she had in mind when she was writing the role but that it quickly became apparent during casting that she was the correct choice. "I always want to know more about her," says Campion of Moss. "She's a bit like the Mona Lisa, she shows you something, but there's so much more." For her part, Moss says she was both thrilled and terrified to carry the show. But it wasn't until filming was over that she realized the full scope of what they had made. "They showed this clip they edited together at the end of filming, and by the end tears were just streaming down my face," says Moss. "It was like watching my life for the past five months being played back at me."
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Entering the Void

"In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void..."

Sundance Channel’s first wholly-owned scripted production, Rectify, will premiere on April 22 in the U.S. The show, from AMC Networks and Breaking Bad producers Gran Via, has been also been secured by AMC/Sundance Channel Global for an exclusive first window rollout in Asia, Latin America and select European territories including France, Spain, Portugal and Benelux. ITV Studios Global Entertainment is handling international sales on the six-episode serial created and written by Oscar-winning moviemaker Ray McKinnon (The Accountant; That Evening Sun). It stars Killer Elite‘s Aden Young as Daniel Holden, a man released from prison after 19 years when DNA evidence casts doubt on his conviction for the rape and murder of a young girl. He returns to his home where he must readjust to a new life, including unfamiliar family members and surroundings as a mystery that defined a small town is gradually reopened. J. Smith Cameron (True Blood) will play Daniel’s mother, Abigail Spencer (Mad Men) will play his sister, Clayne Crawford will play his step-brother Ted and Adelaide Clements (Parade's End) will play Ted’s wife. In addition, Jonah Lotan will also feature as Daniel’s lawyer, who works for the non-profit Justice Row, and also making an appearence is the legendary Hal Holbrook.

Rectify was recently screened at the Sundance Film Festival in anticipation of its release on the Sundance Channel this April, and it looks promising from reports of those in attendance. The first two episodes were shown and the audience was left wondering if Holden actually did the crime or not. The show is presented in such a way that the truth is not apparent. The question of whether he is guilty or not is present during these first episodes and consequently, if he’s not guilty then, who was the killer. The series doesn’t focus on the legal aspects of the case, but instead focuses on Daniel’s difficulties adjusting to life outside prison and also on the horrible experience of being behind bars, made clear to the audience in his frequent flashback scenes.


McKinnon got the idea for the series a few years ago while watching news reports on inmates being released based on DNA evidence. He decided to study these cases and add the family life aspects of it in his series. "The story begins with a man being released from death row after 19 years and I wanted to explore what that moment would be like for him," he said. "That moment of being in a literal box and then suddenly thrust out into the world." Sarah Barnett of the Sundance Channel revealed they jumped in on production because they had never read a script like this. "What we are trying to do is tell daring stories and this is a really brave story," she explained.

In a recent interview with Co.Create, Barnett admitted she is hopelessly biased when it comes to Rectify. "It’s hard for me to talk objectively about this show, but I think that there’s a breathtaking lyricism to the way story is told," she stated. "There’s this amazing narrative event at the beginning, which is this guy that’s been on death row is released after 19 years, and there’s something extraordinarily dramatic about that. Then what I love is there’s a truthfulness to the experience of how somebody would adjust, how somebody would actually re-engage with life after all that time. And who is this guy? There’s the question of whether he did it or didn’t. It’s not answered in the first season. But more than that, there’s also the question of just who is Daniel Holden? Who is this person? Even if he didn’t do it, he’s been death row for 19 years, what does that do to a person? How do they come out and learn to re-engage in a world where your family is triumphantly relieved but underneath that also confused and anxious and unknowing about how to accommodate this lost son/stranger into their midst? And then there are the other ripples of Daniel’s return in terms of the politics of a small town and a community. I think it’s an incredibly rich scenario. There’s so much story to explore. Ray has painted such psychologically believable and layered characters this show could go anywhere really."

Speaking about his central character, Aden Young revealed: "He's been greatly affected by his time in prison with 23 hours of solitary confinement and five stays of execution. The story follows his first seven days of release and through him we begin to explore how his family has related to each other since his incarceration and there's a lot of wounds." Spencer plays the sister who from the age of twelve has dedicated her life to her brother's freedom. "The effect on her life is about what is she going to do now that he is out and how to do you make that twist to become your own person," she said. "It's like a rebirth with every character," agrees Young. "With this reintroduction of Daniel into their world their roles have to be completely redefined and people are left with this extraordinary void and have to figure out how to fill it up."

When asked about the process of how Rectify got on the air, Barnett explained: "Actually, the show was pitched to AMC and developed at AMC several years ago. So Ray wrote the initial pilot script a long time ago, and AMC didn’t go forward with it. But it was known within this company. Quite early on, when I actually first got this job, Ed Carroll, my boss [the chief operating officer of AMC Networks], said, "Read this script. What do you think?" I read it, and I was like, "Wow. This is absolutely amazing." But at that time we weren’t at a position to know how to make it. We didn’t have a scripted strategy. We were doing these co-productions, but as time went by and we put into a place a plan and a budget for scripted, it actually felt in a way quite easy to decide to do Rectify."

Having known this amazing script was just sitting there waiting to be made, she must have been thrilled to finally be able to get to work on the project. "Totally," agrees Barnett. "We worked with Ray to reconfigure it somewhat because he had written it awhile previously, and our model is to actually not pilot but to go straight to a six-episode season order. So Ray had structured the format for the first season to be 10 or 13 episodes. Ray very quickly realized that the six episodes was a really interesting creative opportunity for him, and he shifted it quite significantly and decided to make the whole first season just the first seven days of Daniel Holden’s release. So it allowed him to really tell a textured, emotional, immediate, visceral story about that first week of Daniel’s release. I think as an artist Ray was actually freed up and excited about the way in which the format for the first season shifted for him."
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A Rolling Drama Gathers Nude Moss

"You ever try masturbating? It’s very relaxing and not fattening..."

The Sundance screening of Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake came with the following warning: "This seven-hour program includes one intermission and one short lunch break." For the first time in its history, the Sundance Film Festival was screening a miniseries (to air on the Sundance Channel on March 18) as a cinematic event. In his introduction, Festival co-director John Cooper said he’d been inspired by his own tendency to binge-watch TV shows as soon as the festival was over. He thought there just might be enough obsessives in Park City to fill up The Egyptian Theater — the town’s classic picture house — and watch the hell out of some good TV like it was their literal 9 to 5 job. Campion took the stage and promised 'I Made It Through Top of the Lake at Sundance' badges would be awaiting viewers on their final exit. On that matter, noted Vulture's Jada Yuan, she lied...

The disappearance of a pregnant preteen exposes the raw wounds at the heart of an isolated southern New Zealand community in this absorbing and richly atmospheric thriller. Centered around Elisabeth Moss' excellent performance as a detective for whom the case uncovers disturbing echoes of her own troubled history, this multistranded crime saga from writer-director Jane Campion and co-creator Gerard Lee is satisfyingly novelistic in scope and dense in detail. Yet it also boasts something more, a singular and provocative strangeness that lingers like a chill after the questions of who-dun-what have been laid to rest.

The opening shot zooms through a devastatingly gorgeous landscape on New Zealand’s South Island to a lake, clearly freezing cold. A beautiful twelve-year-old girl walks into the titular water up to her neck and just stands there until a local woman passing by breaks her trance and pulls her out. The girl is five months pregnant, and refuses to tell anyone who the father is. Enter detective Robin Griffin (Mad Men’s Moss, with an impeccable Kiwi accent), who’s come back to her small hometown of Laketop to visit her dying mother. She’s tasked with questioning the pregnant pre-teen Tui (Jacqueline Joe) who, after again refusing to divulge the name of her child’s father, is sent back to her own dad — local drug lord Matt Micham (Peter Mullan), a prime suspect. Mitcham, it transpires, seems to have fathered half the local population; Tui is the just the youngest of his numerous offspring, his daughter by his third (ex-)wife, a Thai immigrant.

The next day, Tui steals a horse and rides it to an area on her father’s land where a group of damaged, middle-aged women have set up a camp called Paradise. They live in shipping crates and follow the lead of an androgynous oracle figure/truth-teller played by Holly Hunter, who’s reuniting with Campion for the first time since winning an Oscar for The Piano in 1994. The silver-haired guru has come to Laketop to open a camp for abused and/or abandoned women. Unfortunately, the camp has been built on a piece of land that has long been eyed by Micham, who seems to own everyone and everything in town. The Paradise Ladies give the girl refuge for the night. In the morning, she’s gone, and the mystery truly begins after the first hour of screentime.


The mood of the series is so taut and eerie, you can't initially tell if the story will stay grounded in reality or shift into bizarre Twin Peaks territory. (At one point, Yuan was convinced she’d find out that the lake itself had impregnated Tui.) But it also has a uniquely Down Under humor throughout (Campion is herself from New Zealand) that keeps it from easy comparisons to Lost or other great TV mysteries. (Favorite line, from one Paradise woman to another: "You ever try masturbating? It’s very relaxing and not fattening.") Over the course of the remaining running time, the story abounds in the requisite twists and complications: The lake coughs up the body of a local businessman, while suspicion falls on a hermit who turns out to be a convicted sex offender. But these developments are doled out at a measured clip, and the filmmakers seem less interested in sustaining forward momentum than in painting a vivid panorama of this broken community, a town cloaked in a dark and vaguely incestuous malaise.

From the hooligans (Jay Ryan, Kip Chapman) who carry out Mitcham's bidding to the sad-sack women who gather at GJ's camp, there's a pervasive sense of human lives either wasted or forced into familiar and depressing patterns. The wildness of the surroundings informs the wildness of the characters: Parents and children are forever at odds, and acts of violence and violation are distressingly commonplace, to the point where even Mitcham reacts to the news of Tui's ordeal not with outrage, but with a cynical roll of the eye ("She's a slut, like her dad was a slut!"). Amid this, Hunter is often the hilariously frank comic relief, as well as the story’s moral centre; one can only hope she’ll take on more juicy character parts like this (and generally appear onscreen more) going forward.

As for Moss, this is the performance that could set a very promising tone for her post-Mad Men career. Despite its narrative breadth, Top of the Lake is first and foremost Robin's story. As the detective rekindles a romance with another Mitcham son (Thomas M. Wright) while flirting erratically with her superior officer (David Wenham), she finds her personal life bumping up against her investigation to a near-ludicrous degree. Much of the third hour is devoted to exploring Robin's past traumas as a teenager, and while the idea that she sees a younger version of herself in Tui represents perhaps the tale's most conventional conceit, it supplies a potent emotional fulcrum that pushes the drama into its moving, startling if not always plausible final hours.

Moss, a long way from Mad Men, brings a gripping combination of pluck, vulnerability and intense anger to the complicated role of a woman who fights for every inch of ground and at one point drives a broken bottle into a man's chest. "It was very hard technically," Moss recalls. "I was bleeding, bruises the next day, my voice was gone." Campion's films have long gone against the grain with their strong, embattled distaff protagonists and daring portrayals of female sexuality, and if Top of the Lake isn't in quite the same neighborhood as 'In the Cut', it nonetheless calls on Moss and others to bare themselves physically and emotionally in a story located at the juncture of sex and violence. Stripped bare, both emotionally raw and literally, Moss says she initially balked at being naked; revealing after the screening, "You don’t want to be put in any position — pun intended — that’s not good." But then she figured that "Jane Campion is the most feminist woman on earth; she’s going to be the last person to take advantage of you. She just made me feel safe. Most importantly, too, she was like, 'You’re gonna look great!'"

The other commanding turn here comes from Mullan, playing the unkempt Mitcham as a rough-mannered scoundrel who is not without a certain gruff, randy charm. Other bright spots in the excellent ensemble include Robyn Nevin, tough and sensible as Robin's cancer-stricken mother; Joe, who invests Tui with a fiery refusal to be victimized; and Hunter, making the most of dialogue that basically consists of a string of gnomic pronouncements.

Campion filmed her story in New Zealand, with the drama revolving around a stunning location near Queenstown. But by far the material's most distinctive element is its setting, a wooded region of stunning natural beauty and surpassing human ugliness that lends a uniquely bleak and bitter tang to an otherwise well-worn genre format. Adam Arkapaw's lensing of this unspoiled and unruly landscape is one of the production's chief pleasures, and composer Mark Bradshaw supports the action with a melancholy score that sounds entirely endemic to the setting. New Zealand, of course, is primarily known for the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films so it was important for the people behind Top of the Lake to show a different side to the region. "It's the most comprehensive documentation of modern New Zealand that's ever been done at such a large scale," Moss said. "We show a very different, much more modern, much grittier, much more raw side of it. By the end of production, we couldn't pass a place we didn't shoot in."

Filming took roughly five to six months, primarily in Queenstown and a town about 40 minutes outside of it. Moss, who left for New Zealand days after finishing season five of Mad Men, reminisced about the off-the-cuff rehearsals in a shed with no heating ("it was cold") and production having one satellite phone so they call into town. For Hunter, who - at first - was hesitant to take the job after reading the script, praised Campion's take on the haunting story, saying it had an "incredible maturity" to it. The series, directed by Campion and Garth Davis, was co-written by Campion and Gerard Lee, with producers including Philippa Campbell, Emile Sherman and Iain Canning. Campion annouced ahead of the screening: "I was doing something I'd never tried to do before. It felt crazily ambitious at the beginning to control a six-hour story but sharing it with Gerard was probably the easy part."

Much of the cast and crew had flown in from all around the world, not just New Zealand, but also the U.K. In the Q&A, we learned that newcomer Jacqueline Joe, who plays Tui, had been discovered at an Auckland swimming pool; that Moss had to fight for the part because it was hard for anyone to see her as a strong, tough detective after playing Peggy for so long; and that Hunter’s first reaction to being offered the part of GJ was, "Jane, why don’t you get Ben Kingsley to play this?" Pretty much every person who stood up to ask a question spent at least a minute congratulating himself and the rest of the audience for having made it to the end. 'I felt a lot of love for all the audience because we’d been through the winter together," Campion said. We’re all still waiting for our badges of honour, though.
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Sundance Restless For New Direction

The Sundance Channel, best known for its documentaries and other unscripted fare, is about to present a deliciously suspenseful spy thriller that signals a new initiative for the network: more drama. Restless, a two-part miniseries that begins tomorrow at 9 p.m., would be an attention-getter if for no other reason than its blue-chip cast; including delectable Hayley Atwell (Cassandra's Dream, Captain America: The First Avenger), veteran thesps Michael Gambon and Charlotte Rampling, as well as Rufus Sewell (The Pillars of the Earth), and Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey). Yet there is more to recommend Restless than its fine troupe of actors. Based on the best-selling novel by William Boyd, it weaves a double strand of intrigue set at the eve of World War II and in the 1970s. It's a smart, rich cloak-and-dagger yarn that thrums with an air of paranoia and noir murkiness before ultimately delivering a satisfying twist.

If Restless represents a new thrust for Sundance, then it also raises the question of how this sort of scripted programming will set it apart from that offered by such networks as PBS, HBO or Sundance's sister network AMC? "I feel like there is a distinct space that Sundance Channel can carve out within the growing trend of tremendous scripted drama we're seeing," declares Sundance general manager Sarah Barnett by way of summing up her channel's new initiative. "We want to make shows that are smart, layered, morally ambiguous and complex. I think we can tell stories of new worlds well on our channel. But we can also look at worlds you know, in a fresh way."


Two years ago, Sundance aired the Golden Globe-winning miniseries Carlos, which starred Edgar Ramirez in an Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated performance as notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal. Last year, it presented Appropriate Adult, a riveting miniseries starring Emily Watson and Dominic West. Coming this spring, the channel will debut Rectify, its first wholly owned scripted drama series. From Gran Via (the producers of AMC's Breaking Bad), it is a six-part series created and written by Oscar-winning moviemaker Ray McKinnon (The Accountant; That Evening Sun). It follows an ex-con Daniel Holden (played by Aden Young) who, after 19 years in prison, is released from Death Row when he is exonerated for rape and murder by DNA evidence. He returns to his home where he must readjust to a new life, including unfamiliar family members and surroundings as a mystery that defined a small town is gradually reopened. J. Smith Cameron (True Blood) will play Daniel’s mother, Abigail Spencer (Mad Men) will play his sister, Clayne Crawford will play his step-brother Ted and Adelaide Clements (Parade's End) will play Ted’s wife. In addition, Jonah Lotan will also feature as Daniel’s lawyer, who works for the non-profit Justice Row, and also making an appearence is the legendary Hal Holbrook.

Also in 2013, the Sundance Film Festival- best known for screening buzzed-about independent movies- will screen the channel’s new seven-episode TV series Top of the Lake in the premiere category; making this the first time Sundance has included a scripted long form series in its line-up. Co-directed by the acclaimed Jane Campion (The Piano; Bright Star), who also co-wrote the script, and Garth Davis, Top of the Lake is described as a haunting mystery set in the remote mountains of New Zealand. The series follows a gutsy but inexperienced detective Robin Griffin (played by Emmy-nominee Elisabeth Moss of Mad Men), as she investigates the disappearance of a 12-year-old pregnant girl named Tui, who was last seen standing chest deep in a frozen river. Needless to say, not everything about the case is what it seems. During the investigation, she collides with Matt Mitcham ( Peter Mullan), Tui’s father, a local drug lord (David Wenham), and G.J ( Holly Hunter), a guru at a local women’s camp. The case testes Robin’s limits and sends her on a journey of self-discovery. "Top Of The Lake is an emotional exploration into the depths of the human spirit,” insists Barnett.

Filming on the mini will begin in February in Queenstown, New Zealand, marking the first production Campion will film in her homeland since 1993′s The Piano. "I am in love with the intense beauty of southern-most New Zealand and am excited to be setting a story in this end of the world paradise," she said, before enthusing about the high profile exposure her work will receive. "I am excited to be returning to the Sundance Film Festival with Top of the Lake. I love crime mysteries and I wanted to write one that had room to expand like a true novel so the idea of doing a six hour long story was very exciting to me. To be able to screen the series for the film community is a fantastic opportunity.” The seven-part series will screen in its entirety on January 20 at the Egyptian Theater in Park City, followed by a Q&A with the creators and cast. Campion will also participate in a discussion on the creative appeal of working in TV as part of a Festival pane, titled 'Power of Story: The New Face of Independent Voice,' on January 19.

Also part of the Sundance Channel's 2013-2014 original scripted development slate is Valentines from producer Robert Redford. Based on the novel by Olaf Olafsson, Valentines is detailed as a white-knuckled emotional journey, capturing the most candid of moments between lovers when unspoken truths and long buried secrets surge to the surface and everything changes in an instant. The story follows Herman Peterson – a high-powered New York attorney, and his three attractive daughters – Cathryn, Margaret, and Soley – as we delve into their upscale homes, cosmopolitan social circles, and volatile personal relationships to discover that not all is what it seems.

With producers including Stanley Tucci and Steve Buscemi, Behind the Sun is billed as a wildly distinct coming-of-age tale set in the surfer paradise of Malibu, California. Written by Dylan Gary (Tell Me You Love Me) it is set during the mid-1980s and follows the growing pains of the Georges – a determined, single child family whose lives begin to unravel after teenage son Farron learns he has an incredibly rare allergy to the sun. The series explores the shifting notions of parenting, and how the delayed adolescence and personal ambitions of the adults within this world are throwing their children into psychological and physical jeopardy.

The Descendants from producer Sarah Condon (Bored to Death) and writer Aaron Guzikowski (Contraband, Prisoners) revolves around a sheriff struggling to keep his family together while simultaneously policing two clashing communities: the small town where he grew up and the neighboring Ramapo Mountains, home of the Ramapo Mountain Indians. After a terrible tragedy and coverup occurs involving the sheriff’s wife, an unholy alliance is forged between the sheriff and a dangerous member of the tribe that will come back to haunt all involved.

Also in development is T; a deeply personal look at Terrence, a transgender male who has recently undergone gender reassignment surgery and is beginning to live life as a man. Written by Anya Epstein (In Treatment) and Dan Futterman (In Treatment, Capote), the series cuts between Terrence’s emotional struggle in the present and his past as Thora – a lesbian, student activist at Mt. Holyoke College circa 2005 struggling to find her true self. It is produced by Ira Glass and Alisa Shipp (This American Life).

Finally, Death in the Modern Age is from producers Bob Cooper, JJ Jamieson and Michael Fuchs and writers Josh Shaffer & Eli Kooris. After his personal and professional lives implode in spectacular fashion, a down-on-his-luck suburbanite who has always played by the rules decides to radically reinvent himself by plotting to fake his own death in order to start life anew. In today’s age of DNA testing, digital footprints, and lack of individual anonymity, his escape and ultimate transformation prove to be much easier said than done.

"We use the word 'daring' when we talk about what we're looking for," Sundance GM and exec vp Barnett told The Hollywood Reporter. "It harkens back to the best of what you think of in independent storytelling that's inspired by the sort of stories that our sister network AMC has been telling over the past few years." She added: "These projects tell dynamic and visceral emotional stories that draw on the best characteristics of our independent film roots, namely new kinds of narratives that surprise you and unapologetically raw characters who feel unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. We try to put creativity first and are delighted to tap into the impressive pool of filmmakers who are turning to scripted television, as well as partnering with quite brilliant and accomplished TV talent."

Barnett concludes Sundance are "thrilled to bring two of our scripted projects to the Sundance Film Festival this year and to have a Sundance Channel original series as the first scripted television series to screen as an official selection. It really shows the captivating quality of these two shows and proves how creators with a brilliant vision can successfully move between the worlds of both television and film."

So, with these promising series, will Sundance’s new foray into TV be a success? We’ll find out next month.
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We All Have Secrets

She remembered something a woman in Paris had told her once. A woman in her forties, much married, elegant, a little world-weary. There is nothing easier in this world, this woman had claimed, than getting a man to kiss you. Oh really? Eva had said, so how do you do that? Just stand close to a man, the woman has said, very close, as close as you can without touching - he will kiss you in one minute or two. It's inevitable. For them it's like an instinct - they can't resist. Infaillible...

It is no accident that Sundance Channel will premiere the first segment of its two-part World War II female espionage miniseries Restless on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack Dec. 7, with the conclusion debuting Dec. 14, both airing at 9 p.m. Based on the novel by acclaimed British novelist William Boyd, who also wrote the teleplay, Restless is based on a little-known chapter of espionage history when prior to the Japanese attack in 1941, most Americans were sturdy isolationists with no inclination to be drawn into the war raging in Europe. The British government assigned a secret intelligence cell to manipulate U.S. news media and opinion leaders with disinformation suggesting Germany planned to attack America. The miniseries was filmed in South Africa and the U.K. and boasts a trio of amazing leading ladies in the shape of Hayley Atwell, Michelle Dockery and Charlotte Rampling; as well as Rufus Sewell and Michael Gambon.

Restless starts off like a pleasant British travelogue, with a pretty graduate student motoring along country roads to her mother’s cottage outside a quaint village. The year is 1976. Ruth, now studying for her Ph.D., has been a free spirit without much contact with her mother, getting pregnant out of wedlock in Germany and keeping that little secret for years. Turns out everybody in Restless has a pretty big secret. The camera, riding in the car and then soaring above it, captures the leafy splendor of the rural scene but also conveys a sense of menace and isolation, slightly skewing the horizon and showing us the lonely house dwarfed by towering trees.

Having deftly established its Penny Lane world in just a few shots, the film stands it on its head. The atmosphere of minor-key dread continues as the younger woman arrives to find her mother is not waiting in the kitchen with a tray of scones; she’s out back, in an agitated state, scanning the tree line for intruders with an antique telescope. Her greeting is anything but maternal: "Did anybody follow you?" So begins a delicious excursion into paranoia and surrealism. Ruth Gilmartin (Dockery) is about to learn that her mother, Sally (Rampling), is no dotty old gardener but a gone-to-ground spy whose real name is Eva Delectorskaya, still hiding out after walking a trail of treachery and murder three decades earlier. Now, Eva fears, the chickens hatched during her days in the secret service have come home to roost in those trees. People are watching her, she says. Ruth, of course, thinks her mother is imagining things. But on a whim she picks up the telescope and looks into the woods when her mother is away and sees the shadow of a man. And, inexorably, Ruth is drawn into her footsteps.


A joint production with the BBC and Sundance, Restless reveals Sally’s history to Ruth and the audience on a need-to-know basis, bouncing back and forth between 1939 and 1976. Introducing Eva’s wartime collaborators amid Europe’s politics during the first years of the war could have muddled the project quickly, but the script, directed by Edward Hall (Spooks) succeeds — as long as proper attention is paid. So it is we are introduced to Hayley Atwell, fresh from playing a superhuman soldier confounding the Nazis in “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Here she once again puts on the smart, World War II-era wardrobe that suits her so well, as the young Eva beginning her journey as a Russian emigré in Paris. When her brother is murdered by fascists, a British agent recruits her, sweeping her into a fascinating whirlwind of intense schooling. When she asks her mentor Lucas Romer (Sewell) what to do without a firearm in dangerous situations, he tells her, "Use your intuition. Use your animal instincts."

It’s also a romance, with Lucas seducing his recruit in the calculated, reticent manner that only the British can get away with. Despite the distractions of her affair, Eva sharpens her skills as an operative during this often-overlooked period. Flashbacks show her in spy mode, working for her boss alongside a cadre of colleagues; including Morris Devereux (Adrian Scarborough), who cautions Eva, "When it looks like a Grade A, incontestable, unmistakable suicide, it probably isn't." Before the United States joined the Allied forces, a desperate Britain was playing every card in the deck to try to sway public opinion in isolationist America. Eva plants international news reports for a while, but parts of her training — call them trash cans, not dust bins — make it obvious she’s headed stateside.

When she arrives in the fall of 1941, as far as the FDR’s America is concerned, she is the enemy, an invader on U.S. soil who must dodge the FBI as well as agents from other countries. None of them know that the Japanese will soon save the British a lot of trouble. What was billed as a routine courier job in New Mexico puts Eva’s life on the line, and her immediate suspicions reveal a true talent for the game. Restless doesn’t cheapen her adventure with extended shootouts or explosions, let alone James Bond-style car chases and nifty gadgets. Eva has no one she can turn to. Her wits are her only weapon.

With or without guns, we know Eva survives the war, because we’ve already met her as a recent widow living in a countryside cottage straight out of Howards End. But her days have none of the afternoon teas or petty class concerns of an E.M. Forster novel. She’s been looking over her shoulder, living for decades with her identity successfully hidden, but now someone is watching her. The forceful Sally is not about to play defence with the shadowy figures skulking in her woods. She makes the decision to confide in her grown daughter, who is understandably incredulous. “Suddenly I’m half-Russian?” Ruth says, before her mother shocks her further by speaking her native language over coffee. After a few scary encounters of her own, Ruth quickly realizes that Mum might be paranoid, but that doesn’t mean no one’s after her.

Ever since a photo ran with her late husband's memorial announcement in the paper, she has been especially fearful for her life, constantly looking over her shoulder and into the distance through a spyglass. She purchases a shotgun for protection. What's a good daughter to do? Help Mum, of course. Ruth and Sally put their heads together to track down the one man who can end her anxious waiting and watching: Eva's former lover and spymaster, who now goes by the alias Baron Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve (Gambon).

Thus Restless weaves back and forth on two story tracks: The tale of Eva’s espionage career in the 1930s, and her conviction that her spy days have returned to haunt her in the 1970s. Her daughter finally accepts the truth of the former, but is skeptical of the latter. "The war’s been over for 30 years, for God’s sake," Ruth chides her mother. "Why are you carrying on with all this cloak and dagger stuff?" Soon, though, she realizes her mother has become her spymaster, running her as an agent against enemies who may be daffily imaginary or lethally genuine. Ruth, a self-sufficient single mother in her own right, eventually puts herself in harm’s way to help Sally solve her final puzzle. But at the end, she can only watch as her mother manages her own affairs, shotgun in hand. After years of cryptic exchanges in hotel lobbies, gunfire in the dark woods and pillows used as silencers, Eva has learned her lessons, and she passes them on to her daughter: Trust no one else. Trust only your instincts.

Ultimately, the uncommon acuity of Boyd’s script is immeasurably bolstered by the outstanding female cast. Restless might be the rare TV show that wins acting awards for two women playing the same role. Atwell is a marvel of nuance as the reluctant Mata Hari with a romantic core who- nonetheless- kills effortlessly and (almost) remorselessly; shedding character skins — innocent schoolgirl, ruthless spy, befuddled dupe — as naturally as a snake. At first wide-eyed, Eva blossoms with her training. She’s a natural. Atwell gives her an earnestness that’s fresh for a spy story, but she’s also able to convince the audience that Eva’s cunning and determination are what separate her from the pack- not some badass attitude. Besides, Eva is in a part of the agency that disseminates information to manipulate the press- and thus the Germans and Russians, so it’s not like she’s Jason Bourne.

Restless deftly switches between the early '40s and 1976, and much of that has to do with Rampling’s superb performance as Sally. Returning to the World War II epoch that made her a star in The Damned and The Night Porter, Rampling imbues the older Eva/Sally with the manipulative skills and paranoia that accumulate over a lifetime of spying. Once the veil of country widower is lifted and we know she’s a former spy, it only hammers home the fact that she was a damned good one and - for reasons viewers must wait on - is still in danger at her advanced age. Dockery also is impressive in her convincing portrayal of a woman whose world is turned upside down. Liberated from the Edwardian costumery and soap-opera theatricality of her role as the shrill Lady Mary in Downton Abbey, she turns out to be both subtle and shapely as Ruth, buffeted by a dawning awareness that her mother is a complete stranger. "We all have secrets," Eva comforts her. "Everyone. No one even knows half the truth about anybody else."

In Ruthless, make that a tenth.
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