The Boroughs Review: The Duffer Brothers trade kids for grandparents in a surprisingly moving sci-fi mystery

There is something immediately comforting about The Boroughs. Perhaps it is the cast, packed with veteran performers who know exactly how to command a scene without overplaying it. Perhaps it is the warm, lived-in atmosphere of the retirement community at the centre of the story. Or perhaps it is because the fingerprints of Netflix and creators Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews — with The Duffer Brothers executive producing — are visible from the opening episode.

The Boroughs feels like the spiritual cousin of Stranger Things, only this time the people standing between humanity and the unknown are not children on bicycles but pensioners carrying decades of grief, regrets and fading memories. Surprisingly, that switch works brilliantly.

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The show is enormously fun to watch, even when it leans into melancholy. The series follows Sam Cooper, played by Alfred Molina, a recently widowed retired aeronautical engineer who reluctantly moves into a mysterious retirement community known as The Boroughs.

Molina gives the show its emotional spine. Every scene in which Sam quietly remembers his late wife lands with devastating weight. There is a softness and exhaustion in his performance that makes the science-fiction elements feel grounded and human.

Molina is also simply satisfying to watch. He does not force emotion; he lets it settle naturally into every glance and hesitation. By the third episode, I found myself more invested in Sam processing loneliness than in the extraterrestrial mystery unfolding around him.

The rest of the ensemble is equally strong. Alfre Woodard brings sharp intelligence and warmth to retired journalist Judy Daniels, while Clarke Peters gives her husband Art a quiet steadiness. Denis O'Hare, playing a terminally ill doctor, delivers some of the series’ most unexpectedly moving scenes. And seeing Geena Davis show up as retired music manager Renee only adds to the feeling that this cast is having a wonderful time inhabiting these characters.

That is ultimately what makes The Boroughs glide along so effortlessly. Everyone involved is a veteran performer, and the chemistry feels natural rather than manufactured. Even quieter conversations carry emotional momentum because the actors understand how to make ordinary dialogue feel lived in.

The show is also beautifully shot. The retirement community itself becomes oddly cinematic — equal parts comforting suburbia and unsettling experiment. The cinematography leans into soft evening light, long hallways and carefully framed reflections that constantly suggest something is wrong beneath the surface. There are obvious tonal similarities to Stranger Things, particularly in the way the supernatural threat slowly bleeds into everyday life, but The Boroughs never feels like a copy.

What I appreciated most was that the screenplay avoids turning the alien entity into a simplistic monster. The writing is not revolutionary, and there are moments where the dialogue becomes predictable, but the central reveal — that the alien-like being is itself a victim trapped in a cruel Catch-22 — gives the story an emotional complexity I was not expecting. Instead of pure good versus evil, the series becomes a meditation on ageing, memory and survival.

Character development is another major strength. The residents begin as familiar archetypes — the grieving widower, the sharp journalist, the dying doctor — but the series gradually reveals layers beneath each one. Their histories matter.

I was particularly excited to see Bill Pullman appear in a cameo role as Jack Willard, which made his abrupt death even more disappointing. The show uses his character effectively to raise the stakes, but I still wished we had received more time with him.

The finale leaves things intriguingly open. In the closing moments, Sam's reflection glitches slightly, an image that immediately reminded me of the ending of Stranger Things season one, when Will Byers coughed up the slug and briefly flashed back into the Upside Down. The comparison is unavoidable. Yet The Boroughs handles the cliffhanger with more restraint. It is unsettling rather than catastrophic, suggesting something deeper has attached itself to Sam without completely shattering the world around him.

Whether that leads to another season remains to be seen, but the setup is certainly there.

The Boroughs may not reinvent science fiction television, but it succeeds because it understands its characters first and its mystery second. It is funny, sad, eerie and surprisingly tender — a sci-fi drama where ageing itself becomes part of the horror and the heroism.

Most importantly, it reminds us that adventure stories do not belong exclusively to the young.