At the bottom of Top of the Lake

I've now watched 4 episodes of Top of the Lake, Jane Campion's shot at a miniseries, and I think that means I'm more than half-way through - so I guess I'm in for a dollar - not loving the series, but intrigued enough by its mysterious and drawn in by its strengths. Taking the strengths first: great to see Elisabeth Moss in a more dominant lead role, as a tough detective, and in contemporary hairstyle and dress, and especially great to hear her in an N.Z. (I think) accent - so many Brits/Aussies play Americans so it's kind of cool to see the reverse, and I think she does it really well. She plays a detective from Sydney who's home visiting her ill mother in hometown in what they call Southern Lakes district of New Zealand - looks like a more mountainous Lake Tahoe, and I can imagine this series redone as a U.S. version, set there. The settings are extraordinary and Campion manages a mysterious, dark, moody feeling, much like many American shows shot or set in the NW. In fact, the similarities between Lake and The Killing, which I am also watching, are uncanny and, for anyone watching both series at the same time, confusing: both about a powerful, somewhat opaque detective, pursuing the case of a murdered (or in Lake, missing and presumed murdered) young troubled girl. Whereas Killing, esp in seasons 1 and 2, created a whole network of characters and shifted suspicion onto many in turn - including various family members of the dead girl, her teacher, political operatives in town, et al. - Lake is not as complex in clues and leads. Moss/Robin is on a lonely quest to find the missing or dead Tui. The lack of clues, the lack of mystery is a real drawback in Lake - but we're supposed to be less interested in what happened and who dunnit than in the odd characters that turn up in this community. Problem is I for one cannot believe in any of the odd characters - Tui's brutal family of drug dealers, kind of like a Hell's Angels gang with Maori tatts - of the group of women who set up a commune and healing retreat on a remote stretch of land. Holly Hunter as their guru and spiritual leader is completely preposterous, and it just seems like this cast of outsiders  - the men and the women - are a screenwriter's concept and not recognizable as people: compare any of them with the characters in, say, The Wire, or even in The Killing, and you will know what I mean. I.e., no woman in her right mind, or even out of her right mind, walks into a tough bar, slams down a bill, and says, This is for a fuck. Yeah, right. But putting reality aside and just getting into the spirit of the series - and into Moss's acting - such as her extraordinary long soliloquy over dinner in which she  tells another detective, her boss, about how she was raped and had a daughter out of wedlock etc. - great scene, but an actor's workshop scene, not a scene that grows organically out of this dramatic materials.