Widow’s Bay

What’s it about?

Widow’s Bay sees a skeptical mayor pushing a cursed New England island as a tourist haven while its history makes an uninvited return.

Starring

Matthew Rhys, Kate O’Flynn, Stephen Root, Kevin Carroll, Dale Dickey, Kingston Rumi Southwick, K Callan, Jeff Hiller

An Introduction to Widow’s Bay

Widow’s Bay starts off the way all good horror comedies should, with someone who’s almost certainly about to die and no-one taking it very seriously (see also Dead Like Me). A fisherman named Shep Clark (Tom Kemp) drifts out into an ever-densening fog, and talks with the harbour master about his divorce, as though the sea isn’t obviously conspiring against him. The radio crackles, the birds scatter in the wrong direction and then, rather rudely, everything just stops. It’s a nice little bit of tonal throat-clearing, a man cracking jokes about his marriage just before nature says, “shush”. Back on dry land, a group of bored teens has their car radio go dead just before the entire town goes dark, as the ground shakes with a mighty tremor – the first one anyone can remember in 20 years.

Enter Widow’s Bay mayor Tom Loftis (The Beast in Me’s Matthew Rhys), who exudes the anxiety of a man who has organised a dinner party he can’t actually afford. He rushes to his teen son’s room to check in on him, discovers that it’s empty, and then spends the rest of the morning pretending that’s absolutely fine. When he arrives at the town hall, the power is still out, Shep hasn’t returned home, and no one seems to be bothered. Everyone except mayor Tom, who has an incoming journalist to impress and little time to get it together.

The journalist is from a New York newspaper, who Tom is so desperate to impress that he arrives too early – allowing him to be intercepted by an elderly local historian who is well-versed in the town’s back catalogue of witch trials and cannibalism. It’s a lovely piece of comic dread, as a man attempts to sell the postcard version of a location to an enthusiastic visitor while someone else happily narrates the true crime podcast version behind his back. We learn quickly that Widow’s Bay has a talent for pretending its worst chapters never occurred. The fog has not yet lifted, the boat is still not found and Tom is already out of his depth before lunch.

Summary

The premise of Widow’s Bay is a simple one with familiar Stephen King/John Carpenter tropes, and that works in its favour. A struggling New England island needs tourists. Its mayor, who is clearly out of his depth but determined, decides that the solution is charm offensives and selective amnesia about the town’s grislier history. The locals, meanwhile, have been quietly agreeing for generations that Widow’s Bay is cursed, and would like nothing more than for outsiders to not come and find out why.

The premise is already compelling and then the slowly building tone really hooks you, often both funny and unsettling in the same scene, sometimes even in the same sentence. It’s both hilarious and cringe-inducing to watch Tom Loftis bluster his way through a town that knows more than he does, seeking respect he hasn’t earned and a legacy he can’t justify. There’s a vein of small-town satire running underneath, the kind of place where everyone’s business is public property, and every committee meeting doubles as blood sport, and Widow’s Bay is definitely familiar with that territory.

When the horror arrives it doesn’t come with a fanfare. It’s in the corners of normal scenes, a weird video here, an awkward silence there, and then you realise the show has been slowly working its way into your nerves for a few episodes without you even noticing. Rather than a typical scare show, Widow’s Bay is the kind of slow, prickling comedy drama that lingers a beat too long on a joke… until things start to feel off and the joke takes on a very different complexion.

Beneath the fog and the folklore, Widow’s Bay is a tale of the stories communities tell themselves to get through the day and what happens when those stories prove to have been warnings all along. Tom wants the island’s past tidied away and monetised. As becomes increasingly clear, the island has other plans. Whether that makes for triumph or disaster is the whole ride, and it’s a genuinely great watch, sleepless nights included.

Check out the Season 1 Trailer here: