Horror comedy is pretty difficult to get right—you need to be able to balance real fear and the cathartic release of humor, but without sacrificing the pathos necessary to make both of those things land. Shaun of the Dead is the high water mark for me, and few have reached those heights since. The new Apple TV show Widow’s Bay hits the exact sweet spot.
Widow’s Bay is a pretty funny show to watch right after finishing The American, which also starred Matthew Rhys as a Russian spy who absolutely hates being a spy and doing spy things. In Widow’s Bay, Rhys plays the equally put upon town mayor Tom Loftis, who wants to turn the sleepy New England island town of Widow’s Bay from a depressed fishing community into the next Martha’s Vineyard. Unfortunately for Loftis, pretty much everyone who lives in Widow’s Bay believes the town is cursed—especially creepy old fisherman Wyck, played by a gleeful Stephen Root.
One of the things I really enjoy about this show is that it doesn’t hinge on the mystery of whether or not Widow’s Bay is cursed. The town very much is cursed, and Loftis’ denials only look more and more pathetic as he stays in a haunted hotel and is menaced by a sea hag. These hauntings—and Tom’s unwillingness to admit the very obvious truth—are the source of comedy, and they allow Widow’s Bay to feel like a real place full of dark history. They give each character more depth when we know that instead of trying to prove or disprove the supernatural, they are actually just reacting to the absurdity of their lives. The show takes the idea of living in a haunted town deadly seriously, which ends up being hilarious to watch.
The most recent episode doesn’t involve Loftis much at all, and instead focuses on his mopey assistant Patricia, played by Kate O’Flynn. Patricia has lived on the island all her life and is not well liked, in part because she claims to have been the only target of a local serial killer to have survived an encounter with him. After finding a strange self help book, she decides to throw a party to prove that she’s likeable and deserves friends. Predictably, this all goes wrong, and the moment when the final reveal landed made me and my husband laugh so hard we had to pause the episode.
Part of what makes all the scary moments work is the attention to detail in the prop work. When Loftis spends a night at the haunted hotel, he finds a series of strange tabletop games. One is a card game simply named Run! Another looks like it’s a board game named Teeth but when he opens it, there’s a pair of pliers inside. Similarly, I love the joke of Patricia’s self help book offering her two lines to talk about what she likes about herself, and then the rest of the page to list the qualities she doesn’t like.
We’re only four episodes into a ten episode season, and we have already made this one appointment viewing. Hey, anyone wanna play a round of Teeth with me?
