Widow's Bay

A review of this year's televisual high water mark.

Author’s Note: I’m going to try to keep this as vague as possible and avoid spoilers. But I’m only human and we’re talking about a show that’s only a few months old. If you haven’t got around to watching it yet and you want to go in cold, you might want to skip this one.

I don’t think I could ever be a reviewer. You’ve got to be first out of the blocks and I am a man who likes to take his time, letting the clamour of the zeitgeist brush past me. Sometimes though, something comes along that’s so good I can’t let it sit and percolate. Widow’s Bay is one such cultural phenomenon. The premise tugged at every fibre of my being, and I had so much fun over its ten episodes that I had to get my thoughts down.

Credit: Apple TV

Widow’s Bay tells the story of earnest but inept Tom Loftis, mayor of the titular island off the coast of New England. Tom wants to revitalise the crumbling community by bringing in tourism, turning Widow’s Bay into the next Martha’s Vineyard. He is hamstrung at every turn by a cast of weird and wonderful characters led by his awkward assistant Patricia and salty old seadog Wyck, the island’s creepy Harbinger of Doom.

Oh yeah, because it’s not just the locals getting in Tom’s way. He also has to deal with a centuries old curse that brings wrack and ruin to Widow’s Bay and its inhabitants.

Comedy horror might be the hardest genre to get right. It’s a tightrope walk; if the balance is even slightly off you plummet. I’m of the opinion that comedians get it right more often than the scare peddlers. An American Werewolf in London, Gremlins and Shaun of the Dead, high points of the genre, were all conceived by comedians. Well stand Katie Dippold next to Edgar Wright and Chris Columbus on the winners’ podium¹. Dippold honed her skills writing on Mad TV and Parks & Rec. Widow’s Bay is entirely her creation and she’s knocked it out of the park. The concept is executed perfectly.

The overall tone of the show is a beautiful cocktail of Jaws, The Fog, Fargo and Father Ted, albeit expertly blended into a whole new brew. Stephen King looms in the shadows, too, because you can’t say ‘strange New England town’ without invoking the Big Man. All of the above means that weirdness is baked in, with even the most mundane of conversations threatening to make you do a double take or let out nervous laugh.

Within the overarching narrative, each episode takes on its own life and personality, often within a brisk thirty-odd minute run time. Horror fans will have a field day ticking off the Easter eggs. Some are overt - nods to 1408 and Halloween are so violent they’d look at home in a Slipknot moshpit - while some are more subtle; a flashback episode invoking puritanical dread so grim that Robert Eggers wishes he could harness it. The horror in Widow’s Bay is a treasure trove for fans of the genre, however we’re in that strange land of horror comedy, so it is balanced out at almost every turn.

The best horror comedies are rollercoaster rides. Sam Raimi is probably the master. Raimi gees the viewer up until they almost can’t take it anymore, then hits them with a great big laugh to relive the tension. It’s a tough act to pull off, and without the right casting it so often falls flat on its face.

Dippold has that cast alright. I’m not sure this show would work with anybody else in the three main roles. Mad props to both Matthew Rhys and Kate O’Flynn, a couple of homegrown treasures who carry this big budget Hollywood project with poise and great skill.

Rhys is fantastic as bumbling mayor Tom Loftis. He’s as frustratingly pig-headed as Murray Hamilton’s Larry Vaughn in Jaws but he’s driven by purer motivations, his heart clearly in the right place - even when he’s thinking some pretty unthinkable things. Boris Johnson would never aspire to be Tom Loftis.

Rhys is one of those actors who I’ve always been aware of but haven’t absorbed much of his work, and until Widow’s Bay I was unaware of just what a remarkable comic actor he is. He conveys so much helpless frustration with a little look or a facial expression, not dissimilar to William H. Macey in Fargo. The difference is that Jerry Lundegaard was a miserable weasel, and you’re under no illusion that Tom Loftis, for all of his faults, is going to come through by the time his story is done.

If Rhys is a rather subtle comedy actor, Kate O’Flynn is here to balance him out. Long suffering Patricia is a hilarious study in pent up annoyance, conveyed almost entirely through physical humour and wonderful timing. Every line, every reaction, is delivered with a little quirk. There’s one episode where Patricia is chased through the streets of Widow’s Bay, and even O’Flynn’s run is funny, despite the fact her character is in mortal peril. The fourth episode, Beach Reads is a tour de force performance that suggests a life time of barely-checked frustration. There is a lot more to come from Patricia’s story, and I cannot wait.

With two relatively unknown Brits front and centre, it makes the casting of Stephen Root as Wyck even more enjoyable. Root has been playing outcasts and wierdos for nearly forty years; it is very hard for me to watch him in anything and not think of Milton, his stapler-obsessed oddball from Mike Judge’s excellent Office Space. In Widow’s Bay, Root is ostensibly the straight man - the only resident of this cursed seaside town who knows what’s really going on.

Wyck is set up as the typical crank voice of doom, so much so that The Muse called him The Harbinger in reference to how that architype is skewered in The Cabin in the Woods. And Dippold absolutely wants us to embrace Wyck in that role initially; her show proudly embraces horror’s oldest tropes. Her show also loves to subvert our expectations though, so it’s not really a spoiler to tell you that Wyck becomes so much more than the madman gibbering portentously from the sidelines.

A large part of me really wants the relationship between Tom and Wyck to evolve into a mentor/student one, or if I’m really greedy, something more akin to father and son. Their dynamic, and the interplay between the two actors, is so much fun that I want to see them teaming up a lot more, maybe even going off on fun little missions together. It’s not that sort of show, but a guy can dream, right?

My guys. Credit: The New York Times

Widow’s Bay is bookended by spectacular, doom laden weather events that are pretty good metaphors for the show itself. We start off with a mysterious fogbank, full of doom and menace. No one knows exactly what it means, but it ain’t good. We end things with the storm of the century, a howling gale that threatens to sweep everything about Widow’s Bay into oblivion.

Small spoiler to say that the next morning dawns sunny and bright, but it’s not long before we’re left in no doubt that Widow’s Bay is still very close to tipping over the edge. Series two is already in the works, for now fans are left to speculate wildly about what’s to come. I’m not a huge fan of wild speculation after getting so badly burned by Lost. One thing I do know for sure though: whatever Widow’s Bay series two has in store, it is going to be tremendous fun.

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1. John Landis can do one though. I love An American Werewolf in London, but its creator is not a good guy.