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There’s an experience that happens rarely when watching television. It takes a singular kind of show to elicit it. You watch it and sporadically let out a “ha!” or a “tee-hee-hee” outburst. You’re not cackling or giggling through, as you would to a laugh-out-loud comedy, and you’re not gasping repeatedly, the way a truly creepy horror series might have you doing. You’re just kind of generally tickled by the show.
I am tickled by Widow’s Bay.
The Apple TV series is what I am deeming the coolest show on TV. There is no scientific evidence or metrics for that. It’s just based on what a few people who I think are cool have said, and then, of course, my own personal feelings.
It stars Matthew Rhys—the coolest actor on TV—as Tom, the mayor of a New England island town who is desperate to turn it into a tourist destination, but keeps getting thwarted by the pesky little fact that it is probably (most definitely) haunted and cursed.
Widow’s Bay, the town, essentially exists in a time machine. Cell service is bad, so everyone uses landlines. Mayor Tom has an actual Rolodex on his desk, which is next to the desktop computer and mouse he uses. It seems that everyone is driving station wagons. Everyone knows everyone’s business and whereabouts, making every gathering, be it a work meeting or a visit to the town restaurant, a watercooler session for small-town gossip.
When a writer for The New York Times arrives to profile the town, Mayor Tom salivates at the possibility of the island becoming the next Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket. The pressure to make sure everyone in Widow’s Bay is on their best behavior—and, more importantly, keep their mouths shut about the spooky lore—practically unravels him, however, and he becomes his own worst enemy: so desperate to impress the journalist that he becomes paranoid about the town’s superstitions coming to roost and keeps embarrassing himself.
Of course, the more the journalist catches wind of Widow’s Bay’s past, the more interested he is in those human stories than in highlighting precious seaside cafés, considering how eerie and peculiar the mythology and the town’s characters are.
He—and, in turn, the audience—learns about the fog that signals that the island is “waking up again,” that anyone who is born on the island never leaves, the haunted hotel, and the boogeyman who went on a murdering spree years ago.
There’s a matter-of-factness in the way the residents talk about these things and the possibility of trouble brewing again, the latter as if it were an inevitability, akin to the sun setting at night. That only distresses Tom more, whose aggressive efforts to downplay these stories have the counter effect of him suffering episodes that could be psychotic breaks or could be him succumbing to the island’s curse.
The tone of Widow’s Bay is a real trip. The supernatural stuff is legitimately creepy and unsettling, but never over-the-top or excessive. And it’s nimbly juggled with the show’s sense of humor, which doesn’t lie in any scripted jokes, per se, but in the eccentricities of the town residents and Tom’s exasperation in response to them.
Top-rate character actors Dale Dickey, Jeff Hiller, and Stephen Root are at the top of their games, and Kate O’Flynn steals every scene she’s in as the insecure, yet also self-hyping, co-worker of Tom’s, Patricia. The recent episode centered on Patricia is one of my favorites of TV that’s aired this year.
And then of course there’s Matthew Rhys, who has proven himself TV’s most valuable leading man on shows like The Americans, Perry Mason, and The Beast in Me, and cements that status with this. He makes Tom both slightly irritating and irresistibly sexy—obviously; it’s the inherent Matthew Rhysness of it all.
It’s not often that a series feels so fresh and exciting, yet is also this confident in its own unusual and unique storytelling. Four episodes are out now, with more coming on Wednesdays. Do yourself a favor and watch!
