This Widow’s Bay review isSpoiler-Free.
Widow’s Bay is a series that defies easy description. (That’s a compliment, by the way.) Part workplace comedy, part trope-filled horror story, and part love letter to the power of community and found family, it’s a show that’s honestly quite unlike anything else that’s on TV right now. It’s ten-episode first season mixes surprisingly frightening scares with sharp, biting humor and follows a cast of colorful, quirky weirdos who are as complicated and compelling as any on Apple TV’s roster of hard-to-pin-down comedies and genre-bending dramas. (Widow’s Bay is such an Apple series, and that’s also a compliment.)
Set on a picturesque island off the coast of New England, the town of Widow’s Bay looks like something out of a magazine ad, and its remote, vaguely timeless off-the-grid feel is a big part of its appeal for those who live there. (Its residents don’t have Wi-Fi or cell service, truly the dream!)Its well-meaning, if slightly oblivious, mayor, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), is determined to turn his struggling community into the Northeast’s next big tourist hot spot, thanks to a little help from a visiting New York Times reporter.
There’s just one problem: Widow’s Bay is also a town where bad things happen. Its history is spotted with not only storms, dangerous fog, and various maritime disappearances and disasters, but also persistent rumors of strange creatures and dark activities, such as witchcraft and cannibalism. (Not to mention, the occasional priest getting eaten by a whale, according to the framed newspapers at the local historical society.) And, unfortunately for Tom’s larger cultural ambitions, it seems the island is now somehow waking up in all sorts of unexpected supernatural ways.
With some help from the local superstitious town crank, Wyck (Stephen Root), Tom is forced to confront some of Widow’s Bay’s darkest corners, where folklore and ghost stories carry far more weight than logic and history. Director Hiro Murai crafts a fully lived-in vision of the series’ titular town (and, at several points, its dark historic past) that’s packed with visual references to many longstanding horror tropes and franchises, from a Jaws-like beach escape to a creepy masked killer sloooowly stalking a victim through an empty alley, Halloween-style. Creator Katie Dippold’s dialogue is frequently laugh-out-loud funny, but her story smartly forces the show’s characters to reckon with their own internal demons as often as they face off against external frights.
The series is also an endeavour that’s clearly made with both love and respect for the genre it’s part of. The show takes its horror surprisingly seriously. There are plenty of genuine jumps and scares as well as a fair bit of gore, but the show’s scary elements are never played for the kind of laughs that occur so naturally elsewhere. And while Widow’s Bay may poke fun at its idiosyncratic characters and the increasingly outlandish situations they find themselves in, it also never punches down. Instead, it leans hard into the thing that makes all horror stories worth surviving: The people at its story’s center.
Rhys’s Tom contains surprising multitudes, and his performance strikes a careful balance between earnestness and skepticism, with a bit of unexpected bravery on top. He’s the mayor of a town that he doesn’t always seem to like all that much, but to which he is strikingly and singularly loyal. He’s a devoted single dad to a teenage son (Kingston Rumi Southwick) who seems to be steadily growing apart from him despite his best efforts. He’s afraid of many things, but capable of finding immense courage. And he’s a great boss, if his refusal to fire his objectively terrible employees means anything. As Tom’s forced to face the fact that there’s more to the world of Widow’s Bay than he has ever been willing to fully admit, he must wrestle with the question of how far he’s willing to go to save it.
Although Apple TV has largely centered Rhys in the show’s marketing efforts, Widow’s Bay is an ensemble piece that gleefully subverts many of the stereotypes associated with the kinds of characters at the center of its story. Caustic assistant Rosemary (Dale Dickey) spends most of her time chain-smoking and sharing tidbits of unwanted gossip about townsfolk’s personal lives. Forgetful secretary Ruth (K Callan) struggles to deliver her boss’s phone messages, let alone recall specifics about who might have stopped by the office and when. Mousy Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) desperately wants to be seen and appreciated by those around her after a lifetime of being told the most traumatic event in her past never happened. And Wyck, in addition to being the designated town weirdo, is also a drunk struggling to manage his addiction. On almost any other show, these are the sorts of characters who would most likely end up as cannon fodder, doomed to die in an early episode to prove the supernatural powers of the island mean business. Here, they form the bedrock of the town’s community.
While Dickey gets some of this show’s best lines, it’s O’Flynn who emerges as the quiet MVP of Widow’s Bay. Patricia is at the center of not one but two of the season’s best episodes, and her arc is both surprising and deeply satisfying to watch unfold. Similarly, Root finds the humanity in the show’s most objectively (on-paper, at least) ridiculous figure, and the bonds that ultimately form between their characters and Rhys’s Tom is one of the show’s most unexpected delights.
Widow’s Bay isn’t a series that fits neatly into a box. It’s difficult to quantify and/or explain. Some of the twists toward the end of the season strain credulity. (Even for a show that openly features sea hags and boogeymen.)It might be just a smidge too long. But there’s something to be said for a series that’s willing to be as charmingly and openly bizarre as this comedy-horror hybrid that’s determined to march to the beat of its own drum. That’s got to count for something.
Widow’s Bay premieres Wednesday, April 29, on Apple TV.
