' LADY IN THE LAKE ' : APPLE TV+'S HONOURS

 

STREAMING : ' The Ties That Divide.' APPLE TV+'s mini-series Lady in the Lake is a stunning show that uses murder and mystery to explore the parallel lives of two women - one Jewish, one Black - 1960s' Baltimore.

Lady in the Lake opens with a classic mystery  premise : a man unceremoniously dumping a female-corpse under a midnight blue sky.

Less conventionally, it is nurtured by the voice of Cleo Johnson [ Moses, Ingram], the dead woman herself.

In this speech, Cleo directly addresses Maddie Morgenstern [Natalie Portman], the woman who will later play investigator, for having professed to care about her, but '' truth is, you came at the end in my story and turned it into your beginning.''

While spiking the viewers interest, such an opening also challenges how tales of murder are more usually framed. When told through the activity of an investigator, a victim's story can only be pieced together through fragments of evidence.

By contrast, this drama will be all about agency, notably the agency of women constrained by the ties of family and community.

An Apple Original, Lady in the Lake was adapted and directed by Alma Har'el [ Honey Boy ], and is based on a novel by Laura Lippmann that was itself inspired by two historical murders.

The action is set in Baltimore in 1966, a divided city made feverish with civil rights tensions and in which a young Jewish girl, Tessie, disappears during a Thanksgiving parade.

While we know Maddie will investigate Cleo's death at some point, this narrative line is postponed. Instead, the first few episodes of the series parallel the events in both their lives during the period leading up to Cleo's death.

Maddie is a bored, troubled and affluent Jewish housewife, who once dreamed of becoming a journalist. Cleo is an African-American woman struggling to hold down several jobs and bring up two sons, exasperated by her work-shy husband. Slappy [ Byron Bowers ].

The World Students Society thanks Helen Piper.