It’s always a challenge reviewing something like Lady in the Lake, particularly when it comes time to assign a score. It’s very well-made in pretty much every respect, with great production values, terrific performances and striking, memorable imagery… but it’s a tough watch. The subject matter does kind of demand that it be so, but when the whole series is as unrelentingly, unremittingly bleak as this, it can become exhausting. There was more levity in Chernobyl than there is in this.

Set in 1960s Baltimore, it follows the intertwined stories of Maddie Schwartz (Moses Ingram), a Black bartender trying to take care of her kids. When a young girl named Tessie is murdered, and shortly after so is Cleo, Maddie seizes upon the killings as a chance to make her name.

The contrasting lives of these two women do make for an interesting premise. On the one hand there’s Cleo, a devoted but struggling mother doing everything she can to provide a better life for her boys. On the other there’s Maddie, whose unfulfilling marriage and years of resentment have festered inside her and driven her to the point where she’s willing to burn anything and anyone to achieve her goals.

It’s about how different people respond to hardship, how some choose selflessness and self-sacrifice and others choose to look out for No. 1 at the expense of everyone else. Neither of them is wrong for doing so, and although Maddie is frequently thoroughly unlikable she’s always understandable. Difficult, unsympathetic male characters are a dime a dozen in the world of prestige TV, so it’s a refreshing change of pace to have a female character so unashamed and brazen about going after what she wants. If nothing else, Lady in the Lake gives both Portman and Ingram a real chance to shine, and both acquit themselves irably in what must have been very challenging roles.

The big problem, however, is the tone. To paraphrase Futurama’s Harold Zoid, just because it’s a dramatic show doesn’t mean you can’t do a little comedy here and there. Taking the subject matter seriously and letting dark material breathe is all well and good, but Lady in the Lake strikes one note and does so for seven gruelling hours. It might have been manageable had this been a two-hour movie, but it’s hard work for a seven-episode show. Tragedy and hardship hit harder when they’re contrasted with something; if it’s just dark all the time you can’t actually see anything.

True enough, the final episode does finally introduce a more redemptive element, offering the possibility of something like a happy ending and giving the characters a much-needed chance at doing some good, but it’s a long road to get there. The penultimate episode is a particular struggle, stuffed to bursting with cool, compelling nightmare imagery that just doesn’t seem to actually amount to anything. Alma Har’el certainly has directed the heck out of this show and it looks brilliant throughout, but it’s strangely insubstantial for something with such obviously lofty ambition. It’s immaculately presented but curiously hollow, like a cardboard box wrapped in gold leaf.

However, that presentation is nonetheless strong enough to earn Lady in the Lake a recommendation. It might not do much to truly stand out among the sea of expensive-looking, beautifully-directed and well-acted limited streaming series out there, but it is at least a worthy addition to their number. Maybe just queue up a sitcom to watch afterwards, though.