{"id":787968,"date":"2026-07-08T23:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T23:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/787968\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T23:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T23:23:08","slug":"of-course-widows-bay-is-a-comedy-and-apple-tvs-head-of-programming-knows-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/787968\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Course ‘Widow’s Bay’ Is a Comedy, and Apple TV’s Head of Programming Knows It"},"content":{"rendered":"

To the surprise of no one<\/a> who watched Widow\u2019s Bay<\/a>, the show racked up 19 Emmy nominations<\/a> earlier today, including nods for acting, writing, directing, casting, cinematography, production design, editing, music composition and supervision, and sound editing and mixing. These are all extremely well-earned, and no doubt many will translate into trophies at the ceremony in September. But some might wonder: why was Widow\u2019s Bay classified as a comedy? Sure, it had lots of funny moments\u2014but it\u2019s also scary as hell!<\/p>\n

The Hollywood Reporter<\/a> posed that very question to Apple TV head of programming Matt Cherniss. \u201cOne of the best things about television right now is, I think, the variety of shows and the uniqueness of the creativity that\u2019s out there, and that things don\u2019t necessarily fit into a category maybe as simply as they did in the past,\u201d he said, pointing to Widow\u2019s Bay as an excellent example of this phenomenon. \u201c[Widow\u2019s Bay] scares you, it makes you think, and it makes you laugh\u2014and it makes me laugh a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued, \u201cI also think that there\u2019s a heightened element to the show\u2014and the genre\u2014that leans it a little more into that category. The intention of the actors and the characters are a little bit larger than life at times that I think suits the comedy category for that show, in particular \u2026 if you\u2019re doing a show that examines the human condition, anyway, and there\u2019s no laughs in it, that\u2019s going to be tough \u2026 Ultimately, I do think that Widow\u2019s Bay is in the right place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Insert your own GIF of Mayor Tom flying off a bench while at sea with a 350-year-old living corpse, or raspily intone \u201cdead baby\u201d in your best Rosemary imitation, or mutter \u201che made a pass\u201d while flipping through your photo album in tribute to Ruth. The humor of Widow\u2019s Bay was only made greater by the show\u2019s horror elements, and Cherniss hopes new fans continue to discover this. (All that Emmy attention can\u2019t hurt.)<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, Widow\u2019s Bay\u00a0is having a moment, right? And there\u2019s\u00a0a lot of audience coming to it,\u201d he said. \u201cI think and hope that these nominations will only further supercharge that process, but it\u2019s still very much in that accelerating-growth phase as it relates to people finding it, talking about it, telling other people about it. We\u2019re in sort of the white-hot center of that as we speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Praise the Salty Whale; a second season is coming<\/a>. And Widow\u2019s Bay season one holds up under repeat viewings should you need a little sea-hag situation or perhaps a cursed dance party to lift your spirits in the meantime.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To the surprise of no one who watched Widow\u2019s Bay, the show racked up 19 Emmy nominations earlier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[23083,64,63,12439,134,427,324858],"class_list":["post-787968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-apple-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-emmy-awards","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-widows-bay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}