What if your breakthrough success resulted from a tragedy within your community? Maddie Morgenstern (Natalie Portman) faces this ethical conundrum in the Apple TV+ limited series Lady in the Lake. Set in 1966, two different murders in her Baltimore neighborhood inspire Maddie to make a bold leap from a dissatisfied housewife to an intrepid reporter. But in this adaptation of Laura Lippman's 2019 bestseller of the same name, showrunner Alma Har'el never positions Maddie as a flawless hero driven by selfless reasons on a quest to break the glass ceiling. Rather, Maddie's insatiable drive to crack a whodunnit reflects society’s true crime fascination that begins as newspaper headlines and evolves into books and now thrives across pop culture.
It’s in many ways like Hulu's Under the Bridge, one of this year’s true crime hits, which aired just several months before Lady in the Lake premiered on July 19. The series, starring Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone, similarly depicts how ambition, a writer reckoning with trauma from their past, and a horrifying act of violence intersect. In both series, too, exploration of who becomes a crusading voice for the victim—or even a messenger for the accused—doubles as examining the knotty crime-as-entertainment relationship.
