Ivan Radford | On 21, Jul 2024

There are TV shows that you can watch while doing the laundry. There are TV shows that demand you pay attention. And then there’s The Lady in the Lake, a show so richly complex that it not only needs your full attention but is almost daunting in how absorbing it is.

Based on the novel of the same name by Laura Lippman, it’s a slowly paced, gorgeously detailed noir. The plot unfolds in 1966, as two women’s lives begin to converge. The inciting incident is the tragic disappearance of Tessie, a young girl who goes missing during the Thanksgiving Day parade.

Natalie Portman plays Maddie, a Jewish housewife who becomes obsessed with her disappearance – much to the dismay of her husband, Milton (Brett Gelman), who’s indifferent to Tessie going missing and to Maddie herself, and bewilderment of her teenaged son, Seth (Noah Jupe).

Moses Ingram plays Cleo, a mother who is attempting to raise a family despite the near-constant absence of her husband, Slappy (Byron Bowers), a would-be stand-up comedian who spends most of his time drinking with his mates.

Both women are navigating difficult waters while facing their own unique, albeit often not dissimilar, pressures. Maddie’s a pressure cooker of repressed frustration and social expectations, whose urge to start afresh erupts in angry outbursts and ultimately takes her to new neighbourhoods. She’s privileged but not unsympathetic, thanks to Portman’s nuanced performance, which steers an overlooked woman back into her long-buried aspiration to be an investigative journalist and provides the lens through which this detective story unfolds.

Cleo, meanwhile, has the impossible challenge of three jobs, each one coming with their own restrictions. As well as a disrespected model in a department store, she volunteers for the state’s first Black female senator, Myrtle (Angela Robinson), but finds her unwilling to employ someone who’s associated with criminal boss Shell Gordon (the brilliant Wood Harris) – while Shell, who employs her as a waitress in one of his clubs, doesn’t take kindly to Cleo supporting a force for above-board social change.

The two cross paths in the opening episode, when Cleo literally models the clothes that Maddie goes on to wear, and that fleeting crossover sets their paths on a fatal collision course. Showrunner Alma Har’el (Honey Boy) beautifully swirls the currents of sexism, racism and corruption around these two lightning rods, taking her time to put each puzzle piece into place. She assembles a dizzying mosaic of civil rights-era America, with deftly observed world-building that encompasses everything from family life to police tensions and political struggles.

Har’el moves back and forward, in and out of dreams, with a lyrical quality that’s quietly immersive. What emerges is a story of two people finding themselves, and as Maddie solves one mystery, the identity of the woman in the title takes on a moving clarity. This is an accomplished, ambitious series that’s worth savouring in slow dips as you get lost in its ripples.

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