Widow’s Bay is billed as a comedy-horror but Apple TV’s fantastic new genre mash-up is more likely to chill your marrow than bother your funny bone. There are occasional laughs – mostly at the expense of Matthew Rhys’s bumbling local politician Tom Loftis, the mayor of a remote New England island community with aspirations to be the next Martha’s Vineyard.
However, this new holiday destination is revealed to have a history as a haven for hags and hobgoblins. Things are soon going bump in the night in an enjoyable thriller that reminds us that, done properly, few things are as satisfying as a proper scare.
The series is the brainchild of Parks and Recreation writer Katie Dippold, but anyone expecting a repeat of that show’s rumpled cringe-comedy is in for a shock. So too is poor Loftis, who must contend with the arrival of storm season at Widow’s Bay and an accompanying plague of horrors. These include a vengeful sea witch, a possessed fisherman and, most frightening of all, his bored teenage son taking up with some rowdy locals.
On a cool, windy day, coastal New England feels like a cousin once removed of a certain sort of Irish fishing village. Ballycotton in east Cork or Crookhaven on the Mizen Peninsula come to mind. That feeling of being perched on the edge of a vast, menacing unknown is one of Widow’s Bay’s chief pleasures. There is a specific creepiness about out-of-the-way places at the mercy of the sea’s whims which Dippold captures brilliantly.
Rhys is the star and brings a wry charm to the part of an everyman meddling with forces beyond his comprehension. He’s a little bit David Brent – the awkward outsider desperate to be an insider – while also having the floundering quality of an anti-hero from a Stephen King doorstopper.
The influence of King is discernible throughout – in both the evocation of the uncanny side of New England and its cast of lost souls. The widowed Tom is one, his bored son, Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick) another. Then there is Tom’s secretary Patricia (Kate O’Flynn), a social outcast quietly desperate to be accepted by the local mean girls who made her childhood such an ordeal. It’s classic King – for whom the true horror is invariably that which resides deep within the characters rather than something mysterious and external.
Make no mistake, though, this is a fright night with all the bells, whistles and jump scares. That is made obvious early on when Tom, trying to disprove the island’s supposed curse, volunteers to spend the night at a haunted location. The experience proves a lot weirder than he bargained for. And that’s before the crazy clown turns up.
The hug-yourself horror never veers into downright nastiness and smartly avoids gore – yet is all the more unsettling for that relative restraint. As ever with these affairs, what you don’t see is far more terrifying than what makes it to the screen. Amid a deluge of cosy crime, there is also a real pleasure in a show that embraces the supernatural wholeheartedly and without embarrassment. After Amazon’s Melania Trump doc, it’s the second scariest thing to come to streaming so far this year.