‘Lady in the Lake’
Apple TV+’s latest star-studded TV show is Lady in the Lake, an ambitious adaptation of Laura Lippman’s novel of the same name starring Natalie Portman, Moses Ingram, Mikey Madison, and David Corenswet. The series follows two very different heroines in 1969 Baltimore. Maddie Morgenstern (Natalie Portman) is a disaffected Jewish housewife who is pushed to leave her cozy life behind when a local girl goes missing. Maddie uses this tragedy to reclaim her dreams of being a journalist, wholly unaware that her big break is about to come from the death of another woman: Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram). Unlike other crime dramas that focus on solely on a reporter or investigator, Lady in the Lake gives Cleo her due. The struggling Black mother isn’t just the show’s narrator, but its secondary lead. Maddie and Cleo’s interwoven storylines serve as a stark rejoinder to the crime genre’s penchant for exploiting victims for profit.