Widow’s Bay Is A Haunting Contender For Best Show Of The Year
A workplace sitcom inspired by Twin Peaks? Say no more.
When Apple TV first rolled out the welcome mat for Widow’s Bay, it was with a teaser that leaned headlong into its spooky, Stephen King-inspired vibes. A journalist for The New York Times (Bashir Salahuddin) has come to the eponymous town to write about its potential as a travel destination. But he’s confronted with an ominous warning before he even sets foot on the island: “Bad things happen here.”
Those “bad things” run the gamut of every creepy horror trope you can think of. Widow’s Bay’s first trailer unleashed a supercut of scares clearly inspired by the likes of Psycho, The Grudge, and The Exorcist. There was even an instance of cannibalism in the coastal town’s early days, a fact that its mayor, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), tries admirably to hide from his guest.
Aside from one brief visual gag that cheekily calls his bluff, the initial promo for Widow’s Bay painted the series as a very scary, mostly serious affair. It’s a far cry from the story we actually get — in the same scene our reporter eerily sets the tone, another character delivers one of the show’s best jokes. The head of Widow’s Bay’s historical society is waxing poetic about the persecution of local witches during the Salem era, a “great source of pride” for the town: “We caught ‘em. We burned ‘em...” And Tom naturally cuts her off before she can finish that absurd thought, establishing the wild push-and-pull between the town’s “backwards” locals and his forward-thinking, pearl-clutching ways.
It’s not that Widow’s Bay isn’t, at turns, genuinely frightening, but that’s only half of what makes it such a strong contender for the best show of the year. Apple TV’s latest (and perhaps most ambitious) series is also ridiculously funny, plied through with humor so dry, so blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, that any other show might crack under the weight of it. It’s a workplace comedy set within a haunted coastal town, a bit like Parks and Recreation — the show on which creator Katie Dippold cut her teeth as a comedy writer — spliced with Courage the Cowardly Dog.
Rhys’ Tom, by that logic, is a character who owes as much to Leslie Knope as he does to that fainthearted pup. He’s determined to make Widow’s Bay the next coastal getaway, but he has to fight 100 years of persistent superstitions (many of which speak to a curse that forbids native sons from leaving the island), not to mention the scurvy locals who seem threatened by his attempts to “update” Widow’s Bay.
Widow’s Bay asks: what if the mayor from Jaws was the main character?
But spoiler alert: that curse is totally real, the result of an infernal pact made between the town’s founder and a demonic entity that dwells within the island. The details of that covenant are explored in a spooky flashback episode (directed by Ti West and starring Hamish Linklater and Mrs. Davis’ Betty Gilpin, just in case you need more reasons to tune into the show) — but most of Widow’s Bay is set in the present, following Tom as he comes to terms with the dark secret of his town. With the help of his Girl Friday, Patricia (Kate O’Flynn), and the island’s truest believer, Wyck (Stephen Root), Tom’s mission turns swiftly from protecting the reputation of Widow’s Bay to protecting its citizens from the growing list of things going bump in the night.
Between the ghosts haunting the local bed-and-breakfast, a fog that steals souls, potent mushrooms that pierce the veil between their reality and another, and a storm that sends people spinning up into the sky, Tom really has his work cut out for him. What makes Widow’s Bay such a surprise is that these phenomena are introduced as episodic inconveniences — at least at the outset. Again, there’s a sitcom quality to Tom’s crusade: Even as the strange occurrences build up to quantify something much more dire for the community, Widow’s Bay finds the humor and realism in every revelation. It’s the kind of magic trick that shouldn’t by any means work, but there’s a reason audiences can’t seem to get enough.
Guillermo del Toro took to social media to sing its praises, calling it “one of the most mesmerizing acts of narrative prestidigitation in Horror.” Hideo Kojima, the master of cerebral video games, gave it an equally glowing endorsement, placing it in the same echelons as Jaws and Twin Peaks. Those parallels are more than deserved, but it still doesn’t quite do the show justice. The only way to accurately get a sense of what Widow’s Bay is is to watch its first season. After 10 stellar episodes and a swift series renewal, it’s just the beginning of an incredible run.
