Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay mixes small-town comedy with island horror
The Katie Dippold series is streaming its first season as audience numbers rise and a second season moves ahead.
By Hana Yoshida · Markets Reporter
3 min read
Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay has arrived as a comedy-horror series with strong early praise and rising audience numbers. The first season is streaming now, and Deadline has reported that a second season is already in the works.
Ars Technica critic Jennifer Ouellette described the show as one of the year’s standout new series, praising its blend of supernatural scares, oddball civic life and serialized mystery. According to Ars Technica, filmmakers and television creators including Guillermo del Toro, Ben Stiller and Damon Lindelof have also praised the series.
A town built for trouble
The show centers on Tom Loftis, played by Matthew Rhys, a widower who serves as mayor of Widow’s Bay. Ars Technica describes the setting as a strange seaside town with a long record of recurring disasters, where Tom wants to turn the island into a fashionable summer destination.
That plan gains momentum when New York Times travel writer Arthur Lloyd, played by Bashir Salahuddin, visits the town. Around the same time, a mysterious fog arrives, and local resident Wyck, played by Stephen Root, warns Tom that the island is “waking up,” according to Ars Technica.
The review says Tom first doubts the warnings, then grows alarmed after a sailor lost in the fog dies following a disturbing episode. By then, Arthur has written favorably about Widow’s Bay, tourists are arriving, and Tom keeps trying to reassure visitors despite signs that the town’s legends may be real.
Other storylines follow Tom’s assistant Patricia, played by Kate O’Flynn, whose attempt to host a status-building “sunset cocktails” event turns into a supernatural ordeal, and Tom’s teenage son Evan, played by Kingston Rumi Southwick. Ars Technica says Evan has fallen in with local troublemakers and resents never being allowed to leave the island, where legend holds that people born in Widow’s Bay cannot depart.
Dippold’s shift from spoof to scares
Series creator Katie Dippold is known for her work on Parks and Recreation. In an interview with Deadline, Dippold said Widow’s Bay began as a spec script for that earlier sitcom, but the original version was “much jokier” and felt more like a spoof.
Dippold told Deadline she wanted the show to feel like a place viewers could explore, including its “nooks and crannies and terrifying little spots.” She also said she aimed for the feeling of “dangerous excitement” from childhood visits to abandoned houses, where fear and laughter overlapped.
Ars Technica’s review credits the show’s appeal to that balance, saying the series moves between eccentric humor and frightening set pieces without losing control of its tone. The review also singles out the ensemble, including Chris Fleming as Todd the Shaman, Kevin Carroll as Sheriff Bechir Clemmons, Dale Dickey as Rosemary and Hamish Linklater as town founder Richard Warren in flashbacks tied to the island’s past.
Audience interest has also grown since launch. RVTalk reported that viewership had tripled by the time the fourth episode, “Beach Reads,” aired, with weekly growth of 20 percent, making it Apple TV’s fastest-growing first-year series, according to that report.
Deadline has reported that Apple TV is preparing a second season. Dippold joked to Deadline that the next season would be “about how everything is great on the island and there’s nothing to worry about.”
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.