sarahmillyhannah More than 10 years on since it was first made i still love to watch this. I own it on DVD and have also seen the re runs on BBC3. I could watch it over and over again. I love the atmosphere of the series, the beautiful setting and the acting has to be the best I have seen on TV in a mini series ever. Because of how series 2 is set and some of the bad events in it, it almost makes Cumbria seem a scary setting and it gives it a lovely dark atmosphere. Agreed series 2 can seem more soap than story in places but not overly. I love the hotel scene where its set, I have even visited the hotel and had a ride on the Ullswater, but not actually had chance to see room 34! Chef has to be one of the best characters ever in a series and played wonderfully! Yes it is far fetched in places, but its wonderfully entertaining and addictive, you watch one episode and you have to see them all!!

Ryu_Darkwood Let's just say that McGovern has done a great job in creating a story about how a small community can be influenced by a horrifying incident. The first season is brilliant. I loved the withheld ( often sexual) tension between the characters and the way how they appeared as persons you might meet in reality. The second season isn't bad, but it's just too long for its own good. There are too many uninteresting side-tracks about boring characters. Also, I couldn't quite relate to some of them anymore, they felt too much as made up caricatures. Though at some occasions it does reach the level of the first one, as a whole it's very disappointing. They'd better made it into 4 or 5 episodes instead of the 10 it eventually got.

dmnkeen Nobody can accuse Jimmy McGovern of settling for a quiet life. His dramas, right from "Needle", through to "Cracker" and "Priest", to this masterpiece confirm him as one of the most exciting writers in any medium to emerge in the last decade.And a masterpiece is what "The Lakes" is, even considering its flaws. Occasionally, McGovern seems more concerned with hitting home his messages (about Catholicism, country-versus-city, sexual politics, etc) at the expense of his characters, but he still creates dramatic situations which are credible, raw, and overwhelmingly moving without succumbing to sickly sentiment.Focussing on the story of Danny, a Liverpudlian drifter and compulsive gambler, who marries Emma, the daughter in a devoutly Catholic family living in a small Lake District town, and who is implicated in the drowning accident which claims the lives of four local children, McGovern wrings every piece of emotion from his storyline, and supplies a script which his excellent cast are obviously having a field day with.John Simms is remarkable as Danny, perfectly realising the inner conflict facing his outsider character who craves to do the right thing while aspiring to escape the emotional prison he finds himself in. Robert Pugh and Mary Jo Randle as the parish priest and would-be middle-aged lover handle their roles with compassion and truth, and Paul Copley as Randle's unknowing and decent husband also deserves some kudos.In fact, the entire cast is outstanding, all perfectly getting under the skins of their characters, and the action is all brilliantly orchestrated by director David Blair, who brings all the initially disparate plotlines into one immensely satisfying whole.In an age of endless costume drama, "The Lakes" comes like a blast of welcome fresh air, and very few other dramas produced in the 1990s (with the exception, maybe, of Alan Bleasdale's "GBH") come anywhere near matching its heartfelt intensity.

Gerald Clark The Lakes was a typically powerful piece of Jimmy McGovern-written television, with many memorable images and characters who will live in the mind for a long time.This second series was, frankly, quite unnecessary. There was a sense at the beginning that some storylines and characters were going to have to be contrived in order to wring more out of the situation and it teeters dangerously on the edge of becoming soapy.However, Jimmy McGovern is still an extraordinary writer (though someone else wrote some of the episodes) and the second series is very well directed and acted, so still compulsive stuff - I just prefer to think this story finished after the first series.I hope that credibility is not stretched any further and this portrait will end with this one.