Widow's Bay

I don't recall writing about a series before having finished it. Well, there is a first for everything. Widow's Bay is now streaming on Apple+. A horror-comedy is how I would classify it. Normally, this isn't the sort of thing I would enjoy. Often it doesn't work. For reasons I'm not altogether sure of, this works great. Perhaps because all the gags are played straight, deadpan. Dead is right. What's it all about? Matthew Rhys (The Beast in Me, The Americans) plays Tom Loftis, Widow's Bay's town mayor. Widow's Bay is a small, one-sheriff, island town. Oh, and the island, it's cursed. However, Tom wants it to be the next Martha's Vineyard. He is hoping that a positive article written by a New York Times reporter will help turn the island's reputation around and start bringing in boatloads of tourists. The show has a kind of parallel to Jaws, if it was told from the perspective of the mayor. Instead of a shark, it's a curse. And the curse is deliberately vague, so we can have multiple different horror tropes, and each one gives us a fresh episode - a Gilligan's Island of horror stories: Haunted fog, evil sea sirens, books of witchcraft, etc. Like Chief Brody in Jaws, the Mayor has a quirky old secretary, who has vision problems and a propensity to leave her job early every day. Everyone seems to be working against poor Mayor Loftis. It's a hoot. The tone is something similar to Steve Miner's 1985 film, House. It has an almost nostalgic feel to the show, with elements of John Carpenter's The Fog and Prince of Darkness. Grab your lifejacket and sail your boat immediately to Widow's Bay. Streaming on Apple or grab it from Movies 'N Stuff when available.