‘Did they immediately turn to cannibalism?‘
Tropes are tropes for a reason. People like werewolf transformation scenes. People like meetcutes. People even like it when someone closes a fridge door to reveal a masked killer ready to pounce. For filmmakers and TV showrunners, particularly those working within distinct genres, there are two options. Push back against the tropes and attempt to create something totally new (Backrooms, Skinamarink, Sinners), or lean into the tropes to make the best version of that thing that people already love (Obsession, Weapons, Talk to Me). Widow’s Bay, the now multi-award-winning horror-comedy from Apple Studios, unashamedly borrows from past masters, most notably Stephen King, to produce something truly magical…
Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is the beleaguered mayor of island town Widow’s Bay. While he has ambitions to market the town as the next Martha’s Vineyard to attract tourists, he has failed to reckon with the fact that, like Sunnydale, Widow’s Bay appears to sit atop an axis of evil. Tom’s eccentric but loyal assistant, Patricia (Kate O’Flynn), helps as best he can, but superstitious and outspoken townsfolk such as Stephen Root’s unflappable Wyck Crawford seem determined to expose the island’s murky past.
Showrunner Katie Dippold, formerly of Parks and Rec, has created a show here that is truly episodic and somehow both frightening and genuinely funny. Each episode is devoted to a different horror trope; we have a haunted hotel episode, a clown episode, a folk horror episode, a slasher episode and so on, and while the quality does vary (although this is probably a reflection of my own personal taste rather than anything else), at its best, Widow’s Bay is one of the most flat-out enjoyable TV shows of the last decade. Beach Reads, the fourth episode of the season in which Patricia’s modest attempts to throw a party end in disaster and ruin, is about as good as TV gets. I was glued to the screen. Elsewhere, a flashback episode directed by Ti West and featuring a wonderful performance from guest star Betty Gilpin demonstrates the show’s impressive versatility. The great thing about a monster-of-the-week format is that it can pretty much go on forever – just ask The X-Files.
Widow’s Bay is the show that Stranger Things was always desperately trying to be. Funny, frightening, nodding to the past with one foot in the future, able to have mass appeal whilst still being beloved of genre hounds. This is a show that has it all. I can’t wait to see where it goes for season two.
