{"id":360631,"date":"2026-04-02T18:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T18:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/360631\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T18:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T18:04:09","slug":"matthew-rhys-as-mayor-of-a-haunted-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/360631\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Rhys as mayor of a haunted island"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Even the tamest coastal New England towns can be kind of creepy when winter comes. The boats get docked, the vacationers go home, and the sun sets at 4 pm. Add in a \u201ccheckered past\u201d that sure seems like it includes a smattering of cannibalism, and you\u2019ve got Widow\u2019s Bay, the new series on Apple TV named for the fictional island of which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.avclub.com\/widows-bay-first-look-matthew-rhys\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Matthew Rhys\u2019 Tom Loftis<\/a> is the mayor.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>An official synopsis for the series reads:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In Widow\u2019s Bay, something lurks beneath the surface. Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is desperate to revive his struggling community.\u00a0 There\u2019s no wifi, spotty cellular reception, and he must contend with superstitious locals who believe their island is cursed.\u00a0 He wants these people to respect him.\u00a0 They don\u2019t.\u00a0 They think he is soft and cowardly.\u00a0 And he is. But Loftis is determined to build a better future for his teenage son and turn the island into a tourist destination.\u00a0 Miraculously, he succeeds: tourists are finally coming. Unfortunately, the locals were right.\u00a0 After decades of calm, the old stories that seemed too ludicrous to be true start happening again.<\/p>\n<p>Based on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Nmc2RYm6PUE\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">this first teaser<\/a>, those old stories look pretty paranormal in nature. We\u2019ll find out for sure when the first two episodes of Widow\u2019s Bay debut on Apple TV on May 27.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even the tamest coastal New England towns can be kind of creepy when winter comes. The boats get&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-360631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}