Lady in the Lake is a prestige Apple TV series based on the novel by Laura Lippman.
It opens with a woman's body in the lake. The end of one life leads to the renewal of another woman's.
Set in Baltimore in the 1960s. Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman) is a middle class Jewish housewife who is getting increasingly frustrated with her husband Milton (Brett Gelman) at a time when a child has gone missing.
Maddie takes a drastic step to leave her husband and family to start afresh in a crummy apartment.
In the other side of tracks is Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram) a black single mother juggling several jobs and community activism.
The first episode had a lot of world building. You can sense that this is an adaptation of a novel and it felt sprawling. Undercut with the knowledge that one character will have a tragic ending.
Maddie yearns for some fulfillment and has an escape route. When Cleo speaks out in a political meeting, there are identikit black men ready to shout her down. Sent by an underworld goon.