Abigail De Kosnik admits it wasn’t love at first sight when the new show Widow’s Bay appeared in her Apple TV feed. It wasn’t that the horror-comedy looked bad — in fact, it boasted an extraordinary cast, including Matthew Rhys of The Americans and prolific character actor Stephen Root. “I just wasn’t in the mood to be scared,” she explained. But eventually, with no better options on a late-night search, she and her husband gave the pilot a try.
“It was brilliant,” said De Kosnik.
A UC Berkeley professor in the Berkeley Center for New Media and the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance studies, De Kosnik has spent years examining how audiences engage with serialized storytelling and fan culture. As an expert in how fans track narrative tropes and build digital archives around their favorite shows, few people are better poised to help explain the runaway success of Widow’s Bay, whose genre-blending originality has sparked a massive online fandom and propelled it into a breakout hit.
Abigail De Kosnik is a professor in the Berkeley Center for New Media and the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies.Tiana Hunter
Set on a fictional New England island with a 300-year history of serial killers, suicides, drownings and cannibalism, the show contrasts genuine menace with the mundane workplace ambitions of its mayor, Rhys’ Tom Loftis, as he desperately tries to rebrand the town as “the next Martha’s Vineyard.” Navigating the chaos alongside the mayor is a cast of superstitious locals, each carrying private grievances, secrets and old heartbreak.
