The Boroughs is available on Netflix now.
The marketing for Netflix’s The Boroughs is understandably pushing the involvement of Stranger Things creators, the Duffer Brothers, rather heavily despite the fact that while they are executive producers on the series, they are not its creators or writers. Still, you can see at a glance how Netflix would hope that the show’s premise, especially with the Duffers involved, can evoke a twist on the Stranger Things formula. After all, that recently-concluded series was about a group of average kids in the 1980s encountering an otherworldly threat, and this show is about a group of average senior citizens encountering an otherworldly threat… and some of them are played by actors who became famous in the 1980s!
Alfred Molina plays Sam Cooper, a recent widower who is the newest arrival in the Boroughs, a desert retirement community. In the tradition of The ‘Burbs, Don’t Worry Darling, and a million other projects set in a too-good-to-be-true neighborhood, despite the upbeat attitude of those who run the Boroughs and many of its residents, something very strange and very dangerous is occurring here… something involving a lot of tentacles.
As The Boroughs makes clear from its very first scene, the threat here involves actual creatures of some sort, even as their origin and purpose remain secret. Sam arrives unaware of all of this, of course, though he’s unhappy to be moving there at all. Soon, however, he’ll be drawn into the mysterious ongoing scenario, and – one presumes, based on other stories of this type – some sort of conspiracy involving locals who might be helping to cover up the truth.
Molina is, per usual, a very charismatic on-screen grump, expertly playing a guy whose abrasive nature is accentuated by his recent loss, with Jane Kaczmarek providing crucial charm and warmth as his late wife, Lilly (seen in flashbacks), to give us just enough of a glimpse at their happy marriage to help us more tangibly feel his pain. Much of the first episode involves Sam trying to get out of the contract he and Lilly signed with the Burroughs before her death, only to find himself connecting with some of his neighbors enough to consider staying before he begins to discover the bizarre threat under all their noses.
The Boroughs has a truly stellar cast of industry veterans like Bill Pullman, Alfre Woodard, Clarke Peters, Denis O’Hare, and Geena Davis. It’s hard not to love seeing these guys sitting around at night – just hanging out, chatting, drinking, and getting high together in the first episode. The Boroughs is innately appealing for putting the focus on this impressive, charismatic older cast. With familiar faces like Dee Wallace and Ed Begley Jr. in guest roles, the show underlines how silly it is for actors of their ilk to often only be given supporting roles as the bosses, parents, or grandparents of younger lead characters in other projects once they hit a certain age, when they are still quite capable of holding both the screen and our attention on their own. Along with Molina, Pullman especially stands out in the premiere, bringing a wonderfully appealing vibe to Jack, a laid-back guy who’s determined to get Sam to loosen up.
Is The Boroughs’ story worthy of its cast in the long run? That remains to be seen. The premiere, written by series creators Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews (The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim), is decent. It’s bookended by more overt sci-fi elements while mainly focusing on the lighthearted humor of Sam learning what daily life in the Boroughs is, in theory, supposed to be. Addiss and Matthews do a solid job of introducing the locals, including potential bad guys like the Boroughs’ security and the notably youthful owner, while peppering in small signs that something may be off in terms of how things are run.
The worry with a modern streaming show of this sort is that it will take a premise best served in the shorter runtime of a movie and stretch it out for eight episodes in a way that can feel like it’s treading water at times. The good news is that it sure feels like Sam sees enough by the end of the first episode to not have his initial discovery – and his genuine acceptance that something wild is occurring – take up too much time, especially since we’re ahead of him from the start. Here’s hoping that Sam’s ensuing investigations keep the energy and charm going, even as some darkly entertaining “creature feature” elements are also at work, ready to claim some victims along the way.
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