Director Hiro Murai helps to plant the disquieting seeds.
Widow's Bay
The first two episodes premiere globally, exclusively on Apple TV, on Wednesday, April 29, 2026. Subsequent episodes in the 10-episode series debut every Wednesday. I've seen all 10 episodes.
With Atlanta, Hiro Murai cemented his position atop the comic-horror television director pyramid.
Obviously, it's a delicate balance. Pilot directors -- those who direct the first episode of a series -- are charged with fusing their own sensibility, usually honed through years of helming experience, with that of the series' creator and/or showrunner. Ideally, the result is a show that brings the creator's vision to life, filtered through another pair of creative eyes.
That can be especially challenging with a show, such as Widow's Bay, that, in the words of its official description, "blends genuine horror with character-driven comedy." At least, that's the goal, yet the first two episodes, directed by Murai and set to premiere together this week, play very broadly, with knowing nods to horror scenarios.
Created and written by Katie Dippold, whose credits include the wonderful Parks and Recreation, the series starts off feeling like a pleasant, inoffensive variation in a similar vein, only outdoors in a rugged setting, like Northern Exposure -- not a bad comparison either, that was also a good show -- introducing a phalanx of oddball characters who all exasperate Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), recently returned to the New England island community with his unhappy teenage son Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick).
Besides the Mayor, who constantly puts on a big fake smile, there's grumpy aide Patricia (Katie O'Flynn), long-winded office worker Rosemary (Dale Dickey), a side-eying office worker (Jeff Hiller), and an exhausted Sheriff Bechir (Kevin Carroll), not to mention, as a variation on a town drunk, the town's Jeremiah, named Wyck (Stephen Root), who constantly proclaims the island's many and woeful local legends. For his part, Mayor Tom is still dealing with grief about the long-ago loss of his beloved wife in childbirth; he acts like someone with PTSD who has never fully recovered.
With all these wacky characters, the show also bears a resemblance to broadcast TV's Best Medicine, an updated version of the UK's Doc Martin in which new medical problems keep a newly-arrived and terminally grumpy town doctor quite busy. While that show is pleasant as it sails comfortably down the mainstream, it's apparent from the get-go that Widow's Bay is aiming to create an atmosphere in which horror may eventually arrive.
After all, Katie Dippold also co-wrote the female-led Ghostbusters (2016) with Paul Feig, as well as Haunted Mansion (2023), so she's not unfamiliar with comic horror. Widow's Bay is never as broadly aimed as those two big-budget movies, however, instead endeavoring to trod a less-familiar path, where uncomfortable laughter is supplanted by big-dog horror. No, I don't know what "big-dog horror" means, exactly, except that it felt like what Dippold had in mind for the series as a whole, which requires seeing all ten episodes to appreciate her vision fully.
Matthew Rhy, who initially seems uncomfortably awkward in the early episodes as a somewhat cowardly Mayor, easily justifies his presence with his increased authority and the surety of his character's intentions, which take a while to come into focus; it's a true pleasure to see a great actor nimbly shifting gears. Kate O'Flynn, whose character also seems awkward at first, though for different reasons, really shines in an upcoming episode that appears to be a prototypical Hiro Murai joint, though it is, in fact, directed by Sam Donovan, of Severance experience. Indeed, Donovan, Andrew DeYoung, and Ti West, of all people, who helms an excellent flashback episode, all keep the plates spinning superbly, before Hiro Mirai brings the series home in the final two episodes.
For my money, Stephen Root easily steps up to co-starring status as his character becomes far more than a voice crying in the wilderness. It's a terrific performance and yet another gem from the veteran character actor, who always commands attention in whatever role he plays.
Widow's Bay sneaks up, taps you on the shoulder, runs away, hides, and then surprises you again, time and time again, steadily building in discomfiting terror.
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