{"id":614917,"date":"2026-04-30T08:32:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T08:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/614917\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T08:32:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T08:32:13","slug":"matthew-rhys-new-apple-show-homages-and-spoofs-stephen-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/614917\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Rhys\u2019 new Apple show homages\u2014and spoofs\u2014Stephen King."},"content":{"rendered":"

Horror and comedy have gone hand in hand since long before Abbott and Costello met Frankenstein. They\u2019re the most technically demanding genres, where a laugh or a scare can hinge on a difference in timing or tone, and both function as release valves for truths that are too painful to look at directly. Some of the best horror movies make us laugh at our own fear; some of the best comedies take us right to the edge of the abyss. Either way, we scream.<\/p>\n

The setup for Widow\u2019s Bay, the new Apple TV series created by Katie Dippold, is pure Stephen King: A small island off the coast of New England is haunted by an ancient evil that prevents those born there from ever leaving. But to the town\u2019s beleaguered mayor, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), that centuries-old curse is more of a persistent nuisance. Tom\u2019s big dream isn\u2019t vanquishing whatever it is his town\u2019s more superstitious longtime residents think lurks in the shadows; it\u2019s turning Widow\u2019s Bay into the next Martha\u2019s Vineyard, a picturesque former whaling settlement where tourists flock for a taste of rustic charm.<\/p>\n

The easier route would be leaning into Widow\u2019s Bay\u2019s dark past, drawing guests who might be fascinated with the fact that a sleepy offshore hamlet of a few thousand at most boasts at least two serial killers in its recent history: a masked slasher called the Boogeyman and another known as \u201cthe clown killer of \u201951.\u201d (There\u2019s some confusion about whether that means the latter killed clowns or dressed as one.) But marketing to the Salem crowd would mean admitting what Widow\u2019s Bay is, delving into the town\u2019s past rather than turning away from it. Tom\u2019s not immune to local lore, which is why his teenage son, Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick), has never set foot off the island\u2014doing so, as everyone knows but no one seems to talk about, leads to a sudden and inexplicable death. But he\u2019s still determined to lure travelers to his doomed little town, because the only way he can atone for condemning his child to a life apart from the larger world is to bring that world to the island instead.<\/p>\n

Dippold, who wrote The Heat<\/a> and spent four years on Parks and Recreation<\/a>, is an old hand at comedy, but while she\u2019s technically experienced at mixing it with horror, her forays into the genre, the 2016 all-female Ghostbusters<\/a> and the 2023 remake of The Haunted Mansion<\/a>, tilt heavily toward the comedic. (This is also true of perhaps her greatest contribution to the culture, her famous tweet about dressing up as the Babadook<\/a>.) Widow\u2019s Bay tries to find a more even balance. It\u2019s not, for many of the first season\u2019s 10 episodes, really clear what terrible things have happened in the town\u2019s fog-shrouded history\u2014even by the end, we\u2019re still just getting hints. But the wild-eyed frenzy with which Stephen Root\u2019s island old-timer, Wyck, speaks of it is enough to convince us that it was really, really bad. Others, like Tom\u2019s second-in-command, Patricia (Kate O\u2019Flynn), have more personal reasons to fear. An officious spinster who also runs the community\u2019s rickety bookmobile, she narrowly escaped the Boogeyman as a teenager (or at least she says she did) and has been on edge ever since.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Imogen West-Knights
\n He Made One of 2024\u2019s Breakout Hits. His New HBO Series Is Another Magnum Opus.
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The setup is perfect for a genre-hopping monster-of-the-week show located somewhere at the intersection of It and The X-Files. The season\u2019s best episodes are also the most self-contained, not just in terms of plot but tone. In the second, \u201cLodging,\u201d one of several helmed by \u201cThis Is America<\/a>\u201d and Atlanta<\/a> director Hiro Murai, Tom spends the night in the town\u2019s inn, determined to dispel rumors that it\u2019s plagued by any number of restless spirits, including one called \u201cthe ungrateful Hortense.\u201d His determined rationalism starts to crumble as he peruses the stack of creepy board games in the lounge, one of which, called Teeth, consists only of a box containing a set of pliers. The fourth, \u201cBeach Reads,\u201d focuses on Patricia, whose attempt to throw a townwide party seems doomed to failure until she starts taking the advice of a mysterious self-help manual. Flynn starts out playing the character as a nasal, grating caricature, as if she wakes up every morning and douses herself in friendship repellent. But the episode-long spotlight gives her a chance to play the hurt beneath Patricia\u2019s prickliness and make her more than a small-town busybody.<\/p>\n

Patricia isn\u2019t the only Widow\u2019s Bay resident to have her off-putting side. Although the town\u2019s business owners wouldn\u2019t mind a few more paying customers, few of them really seem to want mainlanders around, or act pleased when a travel writer\u2019s glowing write-up\u2014somewhat sweatily managed by Tom\u2014starts to attract the first substantial crop of tourists they\u2019ve seen in memory. The police chief, Bechir (Kevin Carroll), asks Tom why he\u2019s the mayor \u201cif you hate everyone in this town so much,\u201d but the show doesn\u2019t give us much reason to doubt Tom\u2019s assessment, unless you count the fact that he thinks of himself as the story\u2019s good guy.<\/p>\n

Although it\u2019s clearly riffing on Stephen King\u2019s love of sleepy Maine hamlets, Widow\u2019s Bay is strangely nonspecific about exactly which part of the New England coast it\u2019s meant to be near (were they worried Massachusetts would sue for defamation?), which costs it a chunk of the specificity it would need to bring its imaginary town to life. Maybe Dippold got her fill of local color on Parks and Rec, but its absence is felt here, particularly over the long haul.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

An Acclaimed New Show Somehow Combines Stephen King, Atlanta, Parks and Rec, and Jaws
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

The failure to flesh out the population of Widow\u2019s Bay beyond a handful of characters doesn\u2019t just undermine its sense of place. It deprives the show of something every good horror story needs: victims. Although the season grows eerier as Tom discovers more of the island\u2019s dreadful backstory, it\u2019s rare that anything terrible happens to anyone we truly care about, and the longer the ominous early setups, like a worn chair with leather arm restraints stationed menacingly in an underground room, fail to pay off, the less likely it seems they ever will. It\u2019s as if Lost showed us the hatch in the pilot and forgot to return to it, or it opened up just to reveal another hatch. Streaming shows rely on slowly unraveling mysteries to keep viewers binging, but horror rests in the fear of the unknown, which puts the forces driving Widow\u2019s Bay forward at cross purposes. That\u2019s probably why so many of the most long-running horror shows are anthologies, and those that aren\u2019t, like Stranger Things<\/a>, have to keep switching up the nature of their central threat so we don\u2019t get too comfortable with it.<\/p>\n

Jokes and spooky stories can both be elastic, stretched out as long as the teller\u2019s breath lasts and the campfire stays lit. But that elongation only pays off when you\u2019ve got a conclusion that was worth the wait: and hanging from that door handle \u2026 was a hook! Widow\u2019s Bay spins a good yarn, but I\u2019m not sure that payoff is coming, and the embers are burning low.<\/p>\n

Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Horror and comedy have gone hand in hand since long before Abbott and Costello met Frankenstein. They\u2019re the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[517,1036,88,6842,15823],"class_list":["post-614917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-apple","tag-comedy","tag-entertainment","tag-horror","tag-stephen-king"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}