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Top of the Lake, a new seven-part miniseries premiering tonight on the Sundance Channel, was co-created and co-directed by Jane Campion, who teamed with Holly Hunter 20 years ago on the movie The Piano. Hunter is back for this new project, playing a mysterious New Agey guru of sorts. She's started a small commune for emotionally damaged women, on a remote strip of land in New Zealand.

That story could have been at the center of Top of the Lake, but it isn't. It's more like a running subplot, just like the story that opens the drama — the tale of a 12-year-old girl named Tui who is found walking into a frigid lake, presumably to take her own life.

She's taken to the authorities, who can't get any details out of her. So they call in a visiting detective who used to be a local. And Top of the Lake, especially after the young girl vanishes, turns out to be mostly about that detective.

And that's a good thing, because the detective, Robin, is played by Elisabeth Moss, who plays Peggy on Mad Men. No matter how good you think she is on Mad Men, I suspect you'll be unprepared for her complicated performance here — and not only because she sports an effective New Zealand accent, but because her character is so rough, so raw and so constantly conflicted.

The pace of Top of the Lake is so deliberate and the atmosphere so oppressive, that its overall tone is close to the moodiness of the AMC series The Killing. The beautiful but foreboding setting is a strong character here — but the strongest, in addition to the determined women played by Hunter and Moss, is Tui's father, Matt Mitcham, a local backwoods drug lord played by Peter Mullan.

Matt Mitcham is like a Kiwi version of Al Swearengen from Deadwood — charismatic and deadly all at the same time. Robin gets a taste of this when she first meets Mitcham. She's looking into the death of a local real estate agent named Bob Platt, and visits Mitcham's fortress-like property. He's around back with a dog that's tied to a post and a shotgun within reach. Within a minute of her arrival, he fires the gun — killing the dog, and freaking Robin thoroughly out.

Mitcham frightens Robin, but he doesn't stop her. The biggest mystery in Top of the Lake, it turns out, is what drives Robin — her own demons and hidden secrets, and why she connects so strongly with the missing girl. It's less a mystery than a character study — and despite the show's title, Top of the Lake, all the rewards in this miniseries lie way beneath the surface.

Well, At Least Her Name's Not Medea

Another TV drama premiering tonight, A&E's Bates Motel, is primarily a character study as well — but this time we already know the character. He's Norman Bates, the creepy killer from Psycho with a fixation on his late mother. Well, Bates Motel is a prequel to Psycho, showing Norman in his formative high school years. His mother is very much alive — and her name is Norma.

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The subject of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's relationship with the Jewish community is complicated, multidimensional and contentious. On the one hand, the former New York governor won Jewish votes by landslide margins and led the Allies to victory in World War II, defeating Nazi Germany. Some of his closest advisers and strongest supporters were Jews, including Felix Frankfurter, whom he named to the Supreme Court, speechwriter Samuel Rosenman and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau.

In a Guatemalan courtroom Tuesday, prosecutors will present their case against a former military dictator who ruled during one of the bloodiest periods in the Central American nation's 36-year civil war.

Efrain Rios Montt is accused of genocide in the murder of tens of thousands of Guatemala's Indians. Human rights advocates and the families of victims have struggled for years to bring him before the court, and they say it is the first trial in Latin America of a former president in the country where he ruled.

Antonio Cava, an Ixil Indian with jet black hair, high cheekbones and a soft smile, remembers the exact date, Jan. 15, 1982, when his peaceful childhood high in the Guatemalan mountains came to an end. He was 11.

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A group of foreign college students who came to the U.S. on cultural work exchange visas in December have been protesting their working conditions at a McDonald's in Harrisburg, Pa. In the process, they've wading into a debate about guest workers in the U.S.

The students include Jorge Rios, who says three months ago he eagerly did the legwork necessary to get a J-1 visa, used for student work exchange.

"I had to do a lot of paperwork back in my country to get the visa. I had to travel long distances because I don't live in the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires, I live 14 hours away from there," he says.

Rios borrowed much of the $3,000 it cost. When he arrived in the U.S., the experience wasn't what he was told to expect.

He was escorted to a room in the basement of a house owned by family of the McDonald's franchise owner where he worked. He shared the tiny quarters with seven other students. Each of them got $300 deducted from their paychecks every month for rent — far above market rates.

"We didn't have any privacy. We slept in bunk beds that were meant for children because they moved and squeaked," he says.

Rios says the students were told they'd get 40 work hours per week. But they got only 25 and were told to remain on-call at all times. When they complained, Rios says, his employer threatened them with deportation and further reduced their work hours.

Student Workers Organize

Earlier this month, after reading online about previous student-worker protests, Rios retaliated. The social communications major organized his 15 student co-workers and staged a strike. They have filed grievances with the U.S. Labor Department and State Department, and are requesting a meeting with McDonald's corporate management.

According to the State Department, the J-1 visa, or Summer Work Travel Program, started after World War II to promote cultural diplomacy. Following allegations of abuse in recent years, the State Department curtailed the number of students permitted to come to the U.S. to about 90,000 a year, from a peak of about 150,000 a year.

Robin Lerner, deputy assistant secretary in charge of exchange programs, says the instances of abuse are regrettable and rare.

"Most of the program is filled with wonderful placements," she says, "and the students say what a wonderful time they had and the time they spent here in the United States will forever change their lives."

Investigating The Claims

Lerner says reports of abuse are taken seriously. Companies licensed to administer the programs are sometimes disqualified. The State Department conducts spot checks of programs — though it didn't visit the Harrisburg McDonald's. Now, the State Department says it is investigating Rios' claims.

McDonald's said in an emailed statement that it is also investigating the case. Kevin Morgan, chief executive of GeoVisions, the company that is the State Department-licensed intermediary with the students, said in an email, "we are collecting data, talking with people involved and investigating all aspects of this case."

"We don't want people to come here and have a negative experience, and then leave," Lerner says. "I mean, to me that is the polar opposite of the reason why we have this program."

The Debate Over Work Visas

But the McDonald's case taps into a broader ongoing debate about foreign temporary workers, over 1 million of whom come to the U.S. every year on various visas, including H-2A and H-2B visas. Agriculture and home health care businesses rely heavily on cheap imported labor. But businesses and unions are at odds over how many guest workers should be allowed, and how much to pay them.

Saket Soni is president of the National Guestworker Alliance, a union that helped Rios organize. He says both student and guest workers often fall victim to exploitation.

"It's a massive problem," he says.

Soni says many students — like Rios — go into debt to come here and then are coerced into hard labor or forced to live in destitute conditions.

"The problems with the J-1 visa are part of a bigger picture, which is that guest workers across the country are firstly exploited, and secondly used to undercut local workers and turn jobs into temporary and low-wage jobs," he says.

Unexpected Lessons

In 2011, Ionut Bilan, a 24-year-old student in Romania, helped organize J-1 visa student-workers at a Hershey's chocolate warehouse. He says his experience in the U.S. doing hard labor taught him some unexpected lessons.

"I wanted to stand up for myself, and I wanted to get this situation fixed," he says. Because the McDonald's student-workers were inspired by his protest, it was well worth the effort, he says.

Rios also says his stint has turned into a complex lesson about American society and politics.

"I think that our real cultural exchange started since we decided to get organized and expose this situation. Because we learned that, although we were going through that, most American people, they don't know this is going on," he says.

Rios says he plans to return to Argentina next week.