Where to Watch The Lakes (1997)

Summary

The Lakes is the title of a television drama series in the United Kingdom, made by the BBC and created and principally written by Jimmy McGovern. The Lakes brought writer Jimmy McGovern and actor John Simm a great deal of critical praise in 1997. Following a particularly dry period for British TV drama, the show's realistic characters and their painfully honest decisions hit audiences hard. Simm plays Danny Kavanagh; a twenty-something trapped in a life of compulsive gambling, theft, and being on the dole in Liverpool. On a whim he heads north to the Lake District. He expects to find countryside quiet where he might explore his hidden poetical leanings, but gets caught up in a community like any other. Lies, temptation and tragedy beset every household just as much as the big city. As time races by, Danny's link to the Lakes becomes an exercise in torment when he is suspected after the accidental deaths of three schoolgirls. Stoking the flames of a series of secondary explosions in waiting are a pair of affairs, one adulterous, the other complicated by religion. In the far longer sequel series that came two years later, these back-stories would come to the fore. The series explores a Hitchcockian murder scenario, with series two expressing more black humour that was obvious in series one. The second series received very mixed reviews, with most critics saying it had left realism for high melodrama and contrived plots. Critics said that McGovern's lower level of participation in the writing about his characters and situations, resulted in deviations from their consistency from the first series.