The Strange Confusion of <i>Top of the Lake: China Girl</i>

Strange things can happen when television shows move from one locale to another. The languid moodiness of True Detective’s first season, mired in the mystic culture and history of rural Louisiana, looked more like lumpy, peyote-swigging fan fiction when the show was rebooted in exurban California a year later. Even a simple production change can make a difference: The X-Files, transplanted from filming in dreary Vancouver to sunny Los Angeles in its sixth season, suddenly saw all the myriad possibilities of alien comedy and adjusted its tone accordingly.

, the 2013 miniseries by Jane Campion about a female detective (Elisabeth Moss) investigating a missing, pregnant 12-year-old, was set in the remote town of Laketop, New Zealand, and much of the series’s power came from its bleak, otherworldly landscape. The vast mountains looming over yellow fields put thesetin Panama City, or in San Diego.