Spoilers follow for Widow’s Bay Season 1, which is now available to stream on Apple TV.
Now that the first season of Widow’s Bay has ended, let’s dive deeper into the passionate conversation that’s been growing exponentially with each new episode. Is it really the best new TV show of the summer? On the whole, I think the answer is a resounding yes. The Apple TV series, created by Katie Dippold, has pulled off a minor miracle in effectively balancing its blend of horror and comedy and its deep bench of inspirations — Stephen King’s multitude of spooky New England hauntings and happenings, Twin Peaks, John Carpenter, Jaws, the list goes on — without getting pulled too far in any one direction. There’s simply nothing like it on TV right now.
Widow’s Bay is about a tiny, insular island off the coast of New England that’s basically stuck in a past era. It’s accessible only via unreliable ferry, cell service is practically nonexistent, and the economy has long been sustained by fishing and whaling. The only person desperate to revitalize the place is Mayor Tom Loftis (an outstanding Matthew Rhys), and everyone hates him and his plan to turn Widow’s Bay into the “next Martha’s Vineyard” tourist destination — primarily because the born-and-raised islanders believe their home has been super-haunted since its founding.
Part of what makes the paranoia funny is how its characters weather their superstitions. There’s the middle-of-the-road hushed terror of the townie priest (Toby Huss), but also the extremes in the ranting and raving sea dog Wyck Crawford (an always great Stephen Root) and the matter-of-fact acceptance of chainsmoking mayoral office worker Rosemary (Dale Dickey, who gets her moment to shine in tracing the generational lineage of the island’s curse in Episode 9, “Emergency Shelter”). What ties them all together, though, is their certainty of the unavoidable force that grips the island, and Tom is a dangerous idiot for…