Mare of Easttown meets Schitt’s Creek in this rich, wonderful and laugh-out-loud series, in which a put-upon mayor tries to turn a cursed New England island into a tourist hotspot
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hat do you do if you want your charming little island off the coast of New England to become the next Martha’s Vineyard, but it’s full of legends about local cannibalism, sea hags, clown killers, poison fog and boogeymen who slaughter teenage girls in their beds? And what if it is full of sea hags, poisoned fog and clown killers, which doesn’t bode well for the mythical status of the cannibalism and boogeyman tales?
Such is the dilemma posed by Widow’s Bay for its mayor, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), in a 10-part series that in the very best way defies categorisation. Horror may be its most obvious element, but it is so much more than that. Still, for fans of that genre, the writer-creator Katie Dippold and Hiro Murai, the director of the first five episodes, which set the tone, deliver the goods, lovingly covering most of the tropes.
An alcoholic fisherman, Wyck (Stephen Root), plays the Cassandra figure: his warnings about the island’s curse are initially ignored by Tom, a longtime sceptic. There is a dark alley full of horrors. There is a hotel room in which time passes differently, outside the door of which screams of terror cannot be heard. There is no wifi and spotty phone reception, but flickering lights aplenty and power failures at all the right (which is to say, for the beleaguered islanders, wrong) moments. There are scratches that won’t stop bleeding, coma patients who turn into zombies, chained church bells tolling and – uh-oh – more fog rolling in! Jump scares and gore are measured out beautifully, too.
