3. It features a truly staggering number of classic Hey! It’s That Guy! actors
The aforementioned Bashir Salahuddin, Stephen Root, and Dale Dickey are but three beloved character actors in the Widow’s Bay cast. You will also see Tim Baltz, K Callan, Christian Clemenson, Veanne Cox, Jeff Hiller, Toby Huss, Nancy Lenehan, and Kate O’Flynn. For a production about a cursed island to draw so many national treasures to the same place seems almost irresponsible — why tempt fate, or an asteroid strike that could wipe them all out at once? — but maybe Apple splurged on a special reinforced bunker to keep them safe between scenes.
4. Its teen characters are actually worth watching
I guess I won’t speak for all TV viewers who aren’t parents when I say that programming about children can be tiresome: not only have their problems failed to interest me since I grew out of sharing them, but the kinds of young people who are drawn to be screen performers (or pushed there by their parents) often have a polished precocity that can make them tough to watch. So when I got to the point in the Widow’s Bay pilot where we learn Tom has a teen son named Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick), I worried about how many of the season’s imminent life-and-death crises would require Evan to be in peril. Even worse, they might do what practically every other group of TV teens do these days: commit a murder together and poorly try to cover it up.
Fortunately, I had nothing to worry about: other than steering clear of real danger, the teens act like teens. Evan, in fact, is introduced smoking weed on the back stoop at home; when Tom catches him, Evan stammers, “Do you know what this is? I was trying— I was trying to figure it out.” He and his buddies aren’t preternaturally mature, and do things like tossing lit firecrackers around a junk yard, macking on tourist girls, and daring each other to knock on the front door of a house they claim has an undead murderer buried in its concrete foundation. As the season goes on, Evan gets curious about his late mother, and what he discovers changes his relationship with Tom in compelling ways; the unlikeliest thing to happen in this crazy island is that I’m interested in a potential second season that moves Evan closer to the center of the story.
5. It writes around story-killing tech
Ever since cell phones came into common use, screenwriters — particularly in horror films — have had to figure out ways not to let their characters solve their problems with them, most commonly by having their batteries run out, or by locating characters in coverage dead zones. In a time when stories set in the present day are packed with text exchanges on screen, Widow’s Bay has gone the latter route: there’s no cell coverage at all on the entire island. This means town hall staffer Patricia (O’Flynn) can’t just seethe at Facebook posts about the fun her former high school classmates are having without her — she has to go somewhere they can snub her to her face. But it also means the teens can get up to Stranger Things-ian high jinks with each other in person, never pausing to take a shot for the ’gram; it means Tom can have a random, exciting encounter with tourist Marissa (Elizabeth Alderfer) when she gets lost in town and her phone won’t pull up a map or a rideshare driver. For a series on Apple TV to show iPhones being used only as flashlights may be Widow’s Bay’s most deliciously devilish move of all.
This article was originally published on GQ US.
