I can’t remember starting a column with a confession, but here goes. I’ve tried to write this piece for days, and I believe its curse can only be lifted after I tell you that I took significantly longer than usual to watch Widow’s Bay (Apple TV) because I could only watch it in the daytime. Despite this being a legitimately funny series, it is unsettling and frightening enough for me, an admirer of inventive and intricate horror, to give it the rightful respect and wrangle with it only while the sun is up. What a series.
Created by Katie Dippold, Widow’s Bay tells the story of a picturesque and quaint New England town with a mayor who wants to turn it into a tourist-friendly getaway, like Martha’s Vineyard. As a New York Times journalist is shown around, there are hints of the town’s sordid history—a witch-trial is called a “great source of pride” and there is a mention of cannibalism—but the enthusiastic mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) points the reporter to the seafood instead of the scares. He has had it with the superstitions that dog the town, and wants to move to the future. As he reassures a female colleague who was once traumatised by a boogeyman, “He murdered teenage girls. You’re in your forties, you’ll be fine.”
Dippold says that Widow’s Bay started as an episode of the sitcom Parks and Recreation (JioHotstar), which she worked on as a writer. Indeed this show begins with similar rhythms to that delightful workplace comedy, coupled with a mayor who—like in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws—wants to keep tourism alive instead of sounding a panic. This, too, is understandable. Dread is not tangible. You do not call for a curfew merely because an old fisherman is dredging up old myths. Particularly when the seadog boards the door to an inn by nailing wood to the door without actually obstructing the doorway. How to take this seriously?
The stories, like the skies, darken. The winds howl. The dread builds.
Loftis tells the local policeman to set up a perimeter around the island. “The island has a perimeter,” says the exhausted cop, “It’s called the ocean.” This is a super line, a deadpan response that is both accurate and dismissive. I can’t stop marvelling at Widow’s Bay’s mastery of tone, of how precariously the narrative is balanced on the knife-edge of comedy and horror, how powerfully it deploys both approaches to catch us off our guards, to tickle us and to whisper boo. There is a scene in this show involving sleep paralysis and a demon—and a recliner chair—that is simultaneously the funniest and scariest thing I’ve seen in ages.
Rhys is incredible. I have long been a fan of the Welsh actor who shone in The Americans and the underseen Perry Mason, and he is extraordinary as a man reckoning with the myths and demons of the past—he is literally the widower of Widow’s Bay—who is all too eager to step toward the future. This is a snivelling, timid protagonist compelled by duty not bravery, and the absurdity of his position feels believable because Rhys plays him with such pathetic guilelessness. I’m particularly thunderstruck by his immense physical comedy, the way he puffs his cheeks with panic when an old mayor speaks to him, or the way he squeaks like a deflated tyre before speaking on the phone with a mystery man. The fact that he is never impressive—certainly not in the eyes of his colleagues—is part of the show’s charm.
It is an odd, wondrous ensemble. Kate O’Flynn plays Patricia, the mayor’s assistant who would love to be known for throwing parties and writing poetry but is a friendless outcast mostly laughed at because of stories nobody believes—despite the town itself being made of unbelievable stories. O’Flynn turns her into a character worth rooting for. Hamish Linklater and Betty Gilpin show up in flashback as the town’s founder and his wife and are both superb. The show’s beating heart is the myth-carrying fisherman Wyck, played by the great Stephen Root. Root, a character actor unforgettable in everything from Office Space to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, takes on the hoary part of the grizzled man who knows—and believes—the stories, and makes it so compelling that we can’t look away. Even while Widow’s Bay does its best to make us hide our eyes.
The first few episodes are more comedic. Then the horrors start to feel real and then… in my one quibble with the series, it feels less scary than it could, primarily because the protagonists never seem under threat. The idea of yet another gothic/horror archetype affecting this accursed town begins to feel like a pattern before the show swerves dramatically into the mysteries of its mythology. It becomes about the ideas that hold the townspeople together and keep them afloat, the sinister secrets and sacrifices that make Widow’s Bay—where a blind-eye must be turned to great sadness and shame—a parallel to modern-day America, or even to our own privileged lives. The finale is particularly stunning, and promising. This is a true-blue mystery and the first season has only, thrillingly, scratched the surface.
There is something to be said about old wives tales, and the way they linger on and on. Question the island you have built for yourself. The atoll demands a toll.
Streaming tip of the week:
In the mood for atmospheric horror without the laughs? The Haunting Of Hill House (Netflix) provides reliable goosebumpy thrills with an intricate and complicated build-up and an ice-cold payoff. A good ride.
Raja Sen is a critic, screenwriter and columnist. His first play, a murder mystery called The Simla Affair, recently opened in Delhi. He is currently writing a horror film.