Lady in the Lake

Natalie Portman could have used the coustumes from "Mrs. Mazel" just as easily followed by the old Baltimore sets from "The Wire"--and it would have looked just as good.

I've added an extra star for Slappy, the comedian, due to his Richard Pryor/ Redd Foxx stand-up routines. The rest of the club entertainment was below par.

The whole show was heavy with cliché-after-cliché; the cops on the take, the Jewish jeweler and slumlord, the drugged-up star performer, the evilclub owner...

Maybe this all looked good on paper and sounded like a solid series until somebody added in a committee with final input, thenthe story deviated into a bad dream.

It falls apart fast especially with all the dream sequences. Almost nonsensical by the end. The basic story would have worked fine as a straight mystery without all the additional fantastical elements and the weak social commentary. I know I'm supposed to admire both of those things and the crazy production design but it just does not work. I battled my way to the end of each episode and went on to the next just because I'm a completist and I do like Portman in most of her films. I cant recommend this series and I'm surprised at the range of reviews and ratings for the series here. To each his own.

Natalie Portman investigates several mysterious murders in Lady In The Lake, an ambitious, gorgeously staged, often magnificent yet sometimes frustratingly cluttered miniseries based on a novel by Laura Lippman. In 1960's Baltimore the murder of an aight year old girl prompts Maddie Schwartz (Portman) to gravitate away from her marriage to a persnickety Jewish businessman (Brett Gelman) and take it upon herself to not only solve that one but the apparent suspicious drowning of one Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram), an African American woman dredged up from the bottom of a lake. From there it launches into a horde of subplots that get so complicated and fill the narrative so full to the brim that at times it feels like each and every episode has enough content to be its own series. That's the issue here is that by the time all is said and done it's tough to discern or remember exactly what *was* said and was done, and there are several plot points that still feel muddy to me. Nevertheless, the performances are all excellent, Portman is fiercely committed as ever, Ingram is a revelation as Cleo as they're supported by all sorts of recognizable faces including the always terrific Pruitt Taylor Vince, Noah Jupe, Mikey Madison, Dylan Arnold, Byron Powers, Josiah Cross and The Wire's resident despicable crime kingpin Wood Harris here playing, you guessed it, another despicable crime kingpin. The attention to 60's period detail in terms of both production design and sociopolitical issues is admirable and it all feels very well mounted. But yeah.. the story is like accidentally opening a shaken up beer can and having everything inside erupt all at once over the course of seven very hectic, often disorienting episodes that should have been more measured, more paced... and far more succinctly explained at the end of the day.

I've watched like everything, and I mean everything, available streaming lately. This is so well done! I don't understand why people have an issue with it or can't see how well done it is. It's situations like this where I don't ever know whether I can actually believe reviews. Perhaps the intelligent writing a nuance are too much for simpler minds. Definitely add this to your watch list. Natalie Portman is amazing as are Moses Ingram and Mikey Madison (haven't seen her since the AMAZING "Better Things as Pamela Adelon's eldest daughter - her acting is so well done I had no idea for the first couple of episodes it was even her).

The whole cast is amazing and this is seriously one of the best shows I've seen recently. I can't believe that people are saying it's a "snoozer" or not well done. The only thing I'm mad about is that I stumbled upon it before all the episodes were out because I can't deal with not being able to see all of it at once!

Review posted after watching episode 4.

Hard to understand the low reviews some people are posting - ignore them. I'm finding this to be an engaging and interesting story. I've been a fan of Natalie Portman since Leon: The Professional. Her performance here is one of her most nuanced and complete characters. The entire cast is really good, especially Moses Ingram and Y'lan Noel, who I haven't seen before, and Wood Harris who seems to be everywhere recently.

Still a long way to go in the series, but I'm enjoying Lady in The Lake and think it's worth a watch. Give it a couple of episodes, however, before forming an opinion. It started coming together for me during episode 2. I certainly feel that even after 4 episodes one cannot honestly make a final assessment of the show. However, I really want to see more of this story.

As with other Apple TV shows the production values are top notch. I am old enough to remember the 1960's and the depiction of the era jibes with my memories.s

I have not read the book the series is based on, so I cannot comment about how it follows the book.