TOP OF THE LAKE, BBC2, 9pm
WHEN a drama starts with minimal dialogue it’s usually a good sign. It means it’s confident enough to tempt you in with the setting which, in this case, was a sordid and grimy brothel where two people are disposing of a body in a suitcase. They tip it into the sea and there’s a haunting image of the case sinking through the water with long black hair drifting from it.
Elisabeth Moss plays Detective Robin Griffin. She’s back at work in Sydney after a controversial case, and the male cops can’t seem to stop giggling.
Every single man in this is sweaty, stringy-haired and sexist. In one scene, a greasy gang of them sit around comparing notes on prostitutes, and it’s so absurd it’s almost comical.
We also meet a fiery lesbian, played by Nicole Kidman, whose daughter is in love with a German revolutionary.
Meanwhile, Griffin wakes up screaming each night because of her dark past, and is then called to the beach one morning when the suitcase washes up on the shore.
It’s top of the lake and over the top, but I liked it.
10 PUPPIES AND US, BBC2, 8pm
THIS new four-part series films 10 puppies as they go home to their new families. The puppies need to learn the textures and dangers of their new environment — and also where the biscuits are kept — and the families need to realise that puppies are not cute toys but mad wee whirlwinds who will chew and gnaw and pee and pester.
We follow the new families over their first six months together, and see how Chloe the Chihuahua likes living in a busy nail salon, and whether Jura, a border collie, will embrace her new life as a ski patroller in the Highlands.
It’s good to see the hard work of dog ownership being noted. This might deter some of the heartless idiots who acquire dogs and then quickly discard them. They are family members, after all, not teddy bears.
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