How The ’Burbs Updates A Horror Cult Classic In A Post-Get Out World
“Everyone just wants to be in everyone's business.”
“Does anyone really know their neighbors?” It’s the question that drives many a paranoid suburbia — none more so than The ’Burbs, the self-aware sequel to the late ‘80s comedy starring Tom Hanks. The Peacock series comes from Celeste Hughey, who’s long demonstrated a love for the secrets and suspicion that lurk on quiet cul-de-sacs with shows like Dead to Me and Palm Royale.
“Everyone just wants to be in everyone's business,” Hughey tells Inverse at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival.
It’s a tale as old as time, one that’s been a thing since neighborhoods were invented. “And still, we all look out the windows,” Hughey adds.
Hughey’s reboot was partially inspired by the boredom, obsession, and mania that took us all by storm during COVID lockdown. “I moved to a really quiet cul-de-sac, and every time I would hear a crack of a branch or see a car parked for too long, I was like, ‘There’s a murderer here,” she continues. “There’s always drama happening behind every house. You never know who your neighbor is. One of my neighbors shot one of my other neighbors in the leg because he was trespassing.”
Whether tensions rise to similar effect in The ’Burbs is a closely-kept mystery — but it’s one that made the series one of Peacock’s buzziest upon its debut. The black comedy takes the above hypothetical and strives to answer it with a paranoid twist. Keke Palmer stars as Samira, a new mother with huge reservations about her new neighborhood. She’s joining her British boo, Rob (Jack Whitehall), in his childhood home, and the pair scarcely drop their bags before they’re faced with a minefield of microaggressions from the neighbors. It’s a smart addition to any story coming to fruition in a post-Get Out world, and one inspired by Hughey’s own lived experience.
“It was really important for me to always make sure that Keke’s blackness was front and center in the show,” Hughey explains. “And that is through her costumes, it’s through the music she listens to, it’s through the art on her walls. It’s her Howard sweatshirt. She’s always living in her identity, even with a white husband in a white suburb.”
It helps that Samira quickly finds a support system in her quirky neighbors, from Rob’s high school pal — and the only other non-white resident of Hinkley Hills — Naveen (Kapil Talwalkar), to the well-meaning, wine-loving Lynn (Julia Duffy). They bring her up to speed with gossip about the (obviously haunted) house directly across the street from Samira and Rob’s comfy Colonial home, and they’ve got her back when its new resident, Gary (Justin Kirk), sics the cops on her for “loitering” on his property. His arrival dredges up 20 years’ worth of secrets surrounding his run-down Victorian, including the murder of one of Rob’s former classmates.
Hughey updates The ’Burbs with her lived experience — and this story is all the better for it.
So begins the kind of conspiracy where it’s impossible to know who to trust, informed as much by its diverse cast as it is by the quirky stylings of the original film. It’s not the first reboot of an ‘80s cult classic that Hughey has spearheaded, but there’s a hope that The ’Burbs won’t follow in the footsteps of her last short-lived series, High Fidelity, which was canceled after just one season on Hulu. Given how hungry audiences seem to be for diverse stories, Hughey feels more optimistic about the future.
“I really hope that the industry listens to that,” Hughey says. “People love to not only see themselves, but see the world around them, reflected, and experience worlds that are not their own as well.”
Whatever audiences’ differences, there will always be crazy neighbors to unite us in paranoia.
