Twin Peaks fixed a template modern television keeps returning to: a detective arrives from outside in a small, beautiful, remote place, investigates a crime against a young woman, and finds that the community itself is the thing worth examining. Top of the Lake runs that structure in the New Zealand Southern Alps, with a detective who is from the place and therefore cannot stand outside it, which is the variation. The landscape treated as an active presence, the local institutions that close ranks, and a case that opens onto a wider abuse are all recognisable from Lynch and Frost's series.