Apple TV has been on the hunt for another great mystery. There are only so many TV shows you can release about men in their fifties returning to low-impact sports or petty crimes just to feel something again, and very few titles in the streamer’s catalog so far carry the same rabid fanbase as a sci-fi/mystery like Severance.
That may change with Widow’s Bay, an undoubtedly Stephen King-inspired series about a cursed New England town that pulls off both comedy and horror. It’s one of the hardest genre crossovers in film and TV, but the years that series creator Katie Dippold spent in Hollywood so far likely prepared her to help turn Widow’s Bay into something special. The screenwriter’s history includes fifty-something Mad TV skits, the all-female Ghostbusters, Disney’s latest Haunted Mansion reboot, and a handful of Parks & Recreation episodes.
The latest Apple TV series, which debuts its first two episodes today, is funny—if Parks’s dry wit is more your cup of tea—and actually terrifying when it calls for it. (Imagine if IT: Welcome to Derry was unleashed from the chains of IP storytelling.) If its lucky, Widow’s Bay may even draw viewers into its mystery like Suttor Cane opening the doors to hell in In the Mouth of Madness. Either that, or I’ll be the one guy in the looney bin still singing the show’s praises.
The series follows Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), the mayor of Widow’s Bay who seeks to turn the port side island into the next Martha’s Vineyard. The one thing standing in his way—save for the town’s eerie, crabby, beaten-down inhabitants—is the fact that Widow’s Bay is cursed. Terrible tragedies hide in every nook and cranny of the seaside neighborhood, and there are no logical explanations for why very real hauntings plague the island. Well, except for maybe Widow’s Bay’s insane past.
In the premiere, Loftis greets a travel writer from The New York Times at the island’s historical society, where an elderly caretaker brags that—contrary to Salem, Massachusetts—Widow’s Bay honors their seventeenth-century witch hunts. “Great source of pride… We caught ’em, we burned ’em,” she boasts. They’re surrounded by newspaper clippings with headlines reading “Priest Eaten by Whale” and “Cannibalism in God’s House.” It’s bad vibes-ville U.S.A., and from the look of the town’s history, it might be entirely their fault.
That’s just life on Widow’s Bay. There are plenty more tall tales for discussion at the local tavern, even if the islanders still take most of the superstitions as fact. Here’s a fun one: Anyone born on the island reportedly dies if they try to leave. And, for one of my favorite pieces of early Widow’s Bay lore, Loftis obliviously remarks that the founding settlers arrived to find the island completely uninhabited. Gee, I wonder why!
So, as Loftis tries to trick his brain into not seeing the horrors around him and continue his mission to sell Widow’s Bay as a potential tourist destination, the island begins to act up in response. The potential reopening of a haunted inn riffs on The Shining. A killer sea hag stalks the mayor, and a how-to book about throwing the perfect party accidentally drives the mayor’s assistant Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) to unknowingly channel the dark arts.
Jeff Hiller (recent Emmy winner for Somebody Somewhere and a fantastic guest actor on Apple’s impressive Pluribus) fills out the other eccentric characters who works in the mayor’s office. Plus, Widow’s Bay finds the perfect believer to challenge Loftis’s skeptic nature in Stephen Root (Barry). The always-great actor costars as a salty native named Wyck Crawford who sets out to normalize fighting the curse with every molecule of energy his body has left.
There’s a great joke in the premiere when a dangerous fog rolls in, where Wyck explains the phases of the curse to come. “Stage one: the eyes turn white,” he starts. “Stage two: loss of the five senses and delirium. And stage three? Loss of erection.” You’d think that’s the punch line, but the actual kicker here comes from Patricia. She responds: “Who the hell is trying after stage two?”
Whether Widow’s Bay can break the monster-of-the-week formula to earn a Severance-esque rabbit-hole fandom is yet to be seen. There’s certainly more to the town’s curse to explore, even if getting to the bottom of the mystery isn’t as intriguing as discovering whatever Lumon Inc. is secretly up to in Severance. But the talent behind the camera certainly possesses the means to take the series there creatively.
Hiro Murai—who worked on The Bear, Atlanta, and Barry—directs five episodes of season 1. Indie horror director Ti West (Pearl) helms a flashback episode to the island circa the 1600s, and I’m certain a fair amount of the show’s uncomfortable comedy stems from the fact that Andrew DeYoung (The Chair Company) is on board. How they all coalesced to make Widow’s Bay work might just be the real mystery here.
Because from what I’ve seen of season 1, I’m pleasantly surprised by Widow’s Bay ability to balance all the genres at play. It’s never rolling-on-the-ground funny, nor is it so horrifying that you need to watch it with the lights on. One swing too far in either direction could tip the whole scale, and I’m enjoying the level that Widow's Bay maintains so far. If they could play a bit more into Severance’s style of jaw-dropping twists and constant headfuckery, I certainly wouldn’t mind it.
But at the cost of sounding too greedy, I’m happy to just remain lost in the weekly insanity. As the inhabitants of Widow’s Bay often warn, some things in this world are better left undisturbed.
