The general feeling in re: various streaming platforms and their relative popularity is that no one watches Apple TV+, with the exception of Ted Lasso, which was a genuine hit (especially season one). But outside of Ted Lasso, Apple TV+ isn’t really breaking through, which is a shame, because they have hands-down the highest quality and most consistently good programming among streaming platforms. They are basically what HBO used to be, before the AT&T brass ran off tastemaker Richard Plepler, that is, synonymous with quality.
The latest extremely good-looking drama coming from Apple TV+ that no one is sure to watch is Lady in the Lake, an adaptation of the Laura Lippman novel of the same name. The adaptation was created by Alma Har’el, who also directs all episodes, and it stars Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram as a pair of women whose paths cross, kind of, in 1966 Baltimore. The trailer is fantastic, showing off both the period details of the setting, and Portman as Maddie, a housewife who chucks it all away to solve a murder and get a second chance at a “meaningful” life. Ingram, meanwhile, stars as Cleo, a woman who is murdered, and whose ghost watches Maddie bumbling around the city, trying to report on crimes.
I am always here for Natalie Portman playing a high-strung white lady on the verge of full psychosis, but I also really love Moses Ingram. It’s crazy her big break was The Queen’s Gambit, which was just four years ago! Since then, she was a standout in the otherwise middling Obi-Wan Kenobi, as well as delivering great performances in The Tragedy of Macbeth and, especially, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt. She is imminently watchable.
And I love the idea of a murder mystery involving the ghost of the victim basically scolding the supposed heroine for reducing her life to just the moment of her death. It’s a common problem in true crime—how to honor the victims when the story being told is of their worst moment? The trailer sets up this concept and makes it seem like the central dramatic tension of the story is between Maddie and Cleo’s ghost, that Maddie’s efforts are not as noble or journalistically motivated as Maddie thinks. Also, maybe Maddie is a murderer, too? I haven’t read the book, so I am very intrigued by the setup.
I know I will watch this, but I wonder who else will, too? How long before Apple TV+ either breaks through as the home of prestige streaming, or they inevitably start sacrificing quality for mass appeal?
