Widow's Bay Review

The premise is a chamber of commerce problem. Tom Loftis is the mayor of a small island off the New England coast whose founder made a bargain in 1702 that the town has been paying off ever since, and his job is to keep the tourist season alive while the people who live there try to tell him what comes out of the water. Katie Dippold writes it as a comedy and then refuses to soften the horror, so a zoning argument can turn genuinely frightening without the show changing key, which is the hardest trick in the genre.

Matthew Rhys plays Loftis as a man whose only real competence is social, Stephen Root and Kate O'Flynn get the supporting parts of the year, and Hiro Murai shoots the island for fog and distance rather than for jump scares. The Emmys agreed, handing the show fourteen awards on September 14 including comedy series, lead actor, both supporting prizes, directing, writing and cinematography.

Critics were all but unanimous by count, more than a hundred reviews with barely a dissent, though the aggregate that weights the write ups rather than counting them is a good deal cooler. That gap is the plotting: the season runs case by case with the 1702 story parcelled out around it, and the mythology lands lighter than the craft. A second season was ordered in June.