Widow's Bay review: Parks and Rec meets Twin Peaks in Apple TV's comedy-horror gem

Comedy-horror might be a genre that’s tricky to get right. Some lean too much into gore and jump-scares and forget about the laughter. Others put a stronger emphasis on the humour, and lose any sense of fear.

Widow’s Bay, however, is a rare beast. This neat, off-beat offering from Apple TV gets that balance just right – and it’s largely thanks to Matthew Rhys.

The Americans actor is try-hard Tom Loftis. He’s the mayor of a small, sleepy New England town that has a very superstitious population. And for good reason.

New to the job, he wants to revitalise the tourism industry and bring trade back in. Yet his fellow residents repeatedly warn him that it's a bad idea. And, soon enough, as strange forces start taking hold of the town, he starts to think that they might just be right...
Showrunner Katie Dippold manages to consistently catch you off guard in the best way, as the series straddles suspense and comedy, giving us ludicrous characters that have to deal with genuinely high stakes.

It's not hard to tell that Dippold cut her teeth on comedy Parks and Recreation, with the beloved sitcom's DNA having a heavy influence.

Rhys effortlessly leads the show as the town's cowardly, single-minded, and constantly exasperated mayor, with his deadpan – and often inappropriate – reactions cutting right through the tension.

Forever battling him is the superstitious Wyck, played by Stephen Root, who does his all to stop the tourists coming to the town, convinced he needs to save everyone from the horrors about to befall them – although his methods aren't always quite as effective as he hopes.

But it’s Kate O' Flynn's oddball character Patricia, a lifelong Widow's Bay resident and colleague of Loftis, who's a particular highlight. Her shining moment comes in the fourth episode, when she decides to throw a party with increasingly disastrous consequences.

While there's a lot to like about Widow's Bay, the show sags after the midpoint of the 10-episode run. One episode in particular (each instalment runs anything between 30 minutes to an hour in length) which takes us back in time in a bid to show how the town came to be, doesn't feel entirely necessary, and, while it serves to give us some backstory, it just takes you out of the narrative. A taut eight episodes would’ve been far better.

But, thankfully, there are enough twists, reveals and outright surreal moments to pull us back in and, interestingly, the tone gets unexpectedly dark in the latter episodes.

In a sea of TV series competing to be the most cinematic production on the small screen, it's refreshing to see Apple TV invest in a small-town comedy that scales things right back. This is a comedy that would sink or swim based on its lead performances. And it’s owing to Rhys that this ends up being such a buoyant show. So why not dive in?

Widow's Bay is available to stream now on Apple TV, with new episodes airing weekly.

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