MATTHEW, Mark, and Luke believe that they are the rightful
owners of Paradise - but, for all its beauty, it seems rather a
place of desolation and tragedy. The atmospheric crime drama
Top of the Lake (BBC2, Saturday) is by no means short of
theological resonance, although the lake in question is accursed by
native myth rather than Christian tradition.
Paradise is a stretch of land sold away from the
evangelistically named family - a clan of violence and brutality
who run a sophisticated drugs laboratory. The purchasers are a rum
bunch of women who seek enlightenment from a monosyllabic guru.
Many of the clichés of the genre are here: the detective heroine
returns home with a back story of her own abuse as she seeks to
find a missing girl; false leads are set up; an obvious suspect
commits suicide, closing the case for every-one except our heroine;
boorish and incompetent local police, themselves colluding in the
general sense of pervading lawlessness, seek to obstruct the
superior abilities of the female interloper.
All these elements are familiar, but what sets this apart is the
sheer oddness of the conception. Very cleverly, what seems at first
sight to be ludicrously weird behaviour becomes more reasonable
(although no less shocking) as the story unfolds.
We reluctantly concede that, despite first appearances, such
things might indeed happen. Although I suspect that there may be
glimmers of redemption, this is a bleak vision, Paradise seeming
far more like the howling wilderness of purgatory.
By chance, I saw the breaking news of the announcement of the
royal birth (BBC1, Monday of last week). This was TV reporting of
staggering incompetence. The camerawork was all over the place; the
mixing was ludicrous, a split screen depicting an interesting
expanse of empty tarmac; and the commentators seemed overwhelmed
with emotion, huge grins almost choking the clichés with which they
sought to regale us.
It looked as though they had just rushed to cover a story that
no one was expecting rather than something that they had had hours,
weeks, months to prepare for. It seemed that all the BBC's vaunted
professionalism had been jettisoned as worth nothing: all that
counts now is to wallow in feelings.
A different kind of royalty was on show in Burton and
Taylor (BBC4, Monday of last week), a glossy docudrama that
depicted the great stars' final co-operation, taking the leads in a
Broadway production of Noel Coward's Private Lives. This
provided a neat scenario, as the play is about a divorced couple
who realise that they cannot live apart from each other; and it
also provided a resonance with their most famous roles of Antony
and Cleopatra, where the force of overwhelming love trumps reason,
politics, and caution.
What we saw was more one-sided: it was Taylor who set the whole
thing up, desperate to be with Burton again, while he could hardly
have displayed greater reluctance. Helena Bonham Carter and Dominic
West were terrific, inhabiting their roles with gusto.