Apple TV+ is finally ready to dredge the lake. The Lady In The Lake is heading to Apple TV+, nearly two years after an “extortion threat” that jeopardized its production. Nevertheless, now that that’s all squared away, Apple says Lady In The Lake will debut with two episodes on Friday, July 19. New episodes will be made available every Friday through August 23.
This is a new Lady In The Lake, though. There will be no Philip Marlowe mystery nor pulpy Raymond Chandler dialogue—and per the 1947 film adaptation, presumably no first-person perspective. This Lady In The Water is based on Laura Lippman’s 2019 bestseller. Set against the backdrop of a young girl from Baltimore’s disappearance at Thanksgiving in 1966, Lady In The Lake follows two ladies: Maddie Schwartz (Portman) and Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram). As Schwartz, Portman plays our femme fatal and our detective, a Jewish housewife with a mysterious past she’s hoping to shake by reinventing herself as an investigative reporter. Schwartz becomes obsessed with an unsolved murder connected to Cleo, a Black woman struggling to provide for her family amid Baltimore’s political underbelly.
Two years ago, overblown reports that Lady In The Lake was being delayed over an extortion threat turned out to be a false alarm. A local street vendor was annoyed that the production hurt his business, and he was “arrested on narcotics charges” while “awaiting paperwork to receive compensation for lost business.” So it wasn’t an extortion threat, just someone’s life being ruined to make a TV show.
Lady In The Lake premieres on Apple TV+ on July 19.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated Moses Ingram’s character name was Cleo Sherwood. It is Cleo Johnson. We regret the error.