Lady in the Lake begins in Baltimore, with the disappearance of a young Jewish girl, Tessie Durst, at a Christmas parade. The two lead characters are Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman), a Jewish housewife and mother, and Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram), an African-American mother, wife and bartender. Tessie's disappearance and Cleo's murder mystery arouse Maddie's latent journalistic instincts.
The series was generally well received, with Portman and Ingram receiving acclaim for their performances.
Premise
In 1960s Baltimore, Maddie Schwartz, an investigative journalist working on an unsolved murder, clashes with a woman working to advance the agenda of the city's Black community. Maddie leaves her overbearing husband and Pikesville home to pursue a career as a newspaper reporter.
She becomes obsessed with unraveling the mystery of two separate killings: those of eleven-year-old Tessie Durst and a bartender named Cleo Johnson.[2]
The television series is based on the novel of the same name. Laura Lippman, the author, took inspiration from two real-life murders that happened in her youth.[2] The first was the abduction and murder of 11-year-old Esther Lebowitz, a white Jewish girl whose case was widely publicized.[6][7][8] The second death was of 33-year-old Shirley Parker, a Black mother and bartender who disappeared and whose body was found in the fountain of the Druid Hill Park Reservoir.[9] Parker's death was covered only in African-American newspapers, specifically the Baltimore Afro-American.[10]
Filming began in April 2022,[11] with production taking place in Baltimore.[16] Production paused briefly in late August 2022, when the production purportedly received threats of violence while filming in the city.[17] Police investigation showed the threats to have been unsubstantiated.[18]
Reception
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 77% approval rating with an average rating of 7/10, based on 61 critic reviews. Natalie Portman received critical acclaim for her acting performance in the miniseries.[19] The website's critics consensus reads, "Dense with intriguing drama if too muddled by digressions and stylistic flourishes, Lady in the Lake is a well-acted mystery with a lot on its mind."[20]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 61 out of 100 based on 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[21]
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