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!!

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.

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.

The final image from the first series of `The Lakes', of Danny Kavanah gambling with the only thing he has left - his life - is where this extraordinary story needs to have ended.Series 2 is an overly obvious attempt at extracting every last cent (penny?) from the story. On a positive note, practically all the original cast (with the exception of David Westhead, who only briefly appears in the first episode) returned, and character development, on the whole, was rewarding.However, this series suffers from the use of several writers and directors, with some improbable plotlines and not a small degree of disjointedness. For instance, I couldn't see the point in pursuing the story involving the doctor and her lesbian former lover. And would a mid-forties married woman having an affair with her priest never consider the possibility of pregnancy? This latter storyline was an obvious ploy by McGovern, who penned this particular episode, to display the Church's response to such situations. I had trouble believing that the characters involved would be that careless. Lucy Archer undergoes a complete transformation between Series 1 and 2, and almost overnight develops from a ditsy reactive 16-year-old to a calculating, erudite, Dickens-reading 20-something - a bit hard to swallow, if you'll pardon my pun!On occasion the writing bordered on the brilliant. I'm referring to the "The milk's off!" scene, which takes place in the Quinlan household during one particularly chaotic breakfast time, as well as the card game scene in the hotel in the final episode. The outdoor scenery of the Lake District, breathtaking in Series 1, takes on a threatening and malevolent presence in this follow-up series.I tolerated this series, and even enjoyed it, but only because of my fondness for the main characters. This was due to the superb standard of acting and the believability of characterisations established by the brilliant Jimmy McGovern in Series 1.