Widow’s Bay, on Apple TV+

Islanders are supposed to be tight-knit and stick together, but the locals on this island off the New England coast must take it to ridiculous extremes. Those who were born on the island must never leave the island—ever. Yet, Widow’s Bay also has a macabre history of serial killers and mysteriously deadly accidents. It seems like their doomed either way in creator Katie Dippold’s ten-episode horror-comedy Widow’s Bay, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

Tom Loftis was elected mayor, even though he is considered an outsider. He was born on the mainland, but visited his father on Widow’s Bay for the summers. (His mother once spent a very fateful vacation there herself.) Loftis has heard all about the curse business, but he refuses to believe it, except maybe deep down he does. After all, he has never let his obnoxious son Evan visit the outside world. Nevertheless, he is determined to save the local economy by turning Widow’s Bay into the next Martha’s Vineyard.

Wyck is a local fisherman who has lived in Widow’s Bay long enough to know Lofttis’s plan is a terrible idea and he is onery enough to challenge the mayor, loudly and often. Wyck oobviously understands Loftis’s weaknesses, but he shows more respect than Sheriff Bechir, a contemptuous mainlander nearing the end of his contract. City Hall staff, like the mousy, poorly-socialized Patricia, generally humor Loftis, but deep down they mostly agree with Wyck.

Like it or not, Loftis will have to admit the truth after a series of supernatural incidents, including encounters with the ghost of a Gacy-like serial killer and a spectral “Sea Hag.” Despite its comedy-hybrid classification, Dippold manages to incorporate all kinds of horror staples, even including a masked Michael Meyers-inspired slasher, who seems to impossible to kill. The series initially borrows heavily from The Fog and Stephen King’s Storm of the Century, but it adds plenty distinctive nightmares of its own.

In fact, the horror elements work better than a lot of the comedy, which is highly reliant on public humiliation and the cringe factor. Frankly, the best comedic bits are those that embrace the surreal. Regardless, series directors Hiro Murai, Ti West, Andrw DeYoung, and Samuel Donovan achieve a consistently eerie atmosphere, while Dippold creates some seriously creepy lore.

Babak Anvari’s Hallow Road

Gen X did a lot of things right, but our record raising Millennial and Gen Z kids has been admittedly dismal. The job Maddie and Frank did with Alice is a case in point. She has always been an irresponsible basket-case, but she might have to find some sudden maturity when she takes a detour through the Twilight Zone (so to speak) in Babak Anvari’s Hallow Road, which opens today as part of a special AMC horror double feature.

After arguing with her parents (yet again), Alice drove off angry into the night, where she slammed into an unsuspecting girl her age. Of course, she calls her parents hoping they can fix her mess (yet again). Maddie, a burned out EMT wants her to call back emergency services, so she can follow their directions, but the even more-coddling Frank insists she keep them on speaker phone as they race to meet her along a lonely stretch of Hallow Road.

Apparently, that titular road has a bit of a folky horror reputation. Not surprisingly, the vibe feels off. (Coincidentally, the GPS display says its 10/31, but maybe its always Halloween on Hallow Road.) Regardless, Maddie has more pressing concerns, like trying to save the poor girl’s life. To make matters worse, Frank constantly contradicts her with his responsibility-averse advice. Then a mystery couple arrives on the scene.

To a great extent, Hallow Road is like the genre take on Locke—and it works surprisingly well as such. Anvari’s execution is tense, moody, and claustrophobic. It literally incorporates several of parents’ worst fears, so it is easy to relate to Maddie and Frank, despite (or even because of) their shortcomings.

Towards Zero, on BritBox

Poor Superintendent Battle. He is always overlooked, even though he is probably Agatha Christie’s fourth most prolific crime-solver (after Poirot, Miss Marple, and Tommy & Tuppence). To compound the insult, ITV previously adapted Towards Zero and The Secret Chimneys as Miss Marple mysteries, leaving him out. It sort of happens again with this adaptation of the latter. Instead of the Superintendent and his nephew Inspector Leach working together, it is just Leach, who carries much more baggage this time around. However, grouchy Lady Tressilian is still a handful and she once again meets an untimely demise in the three-episode adaptation of Towards Zero, which premieres today on BritBox.

As the matriarch of her extended family, Lady Tressilian is a bit disappointed by her nephew Neville Strange’s divorce, but she still agrees to host him and his “homewrecker” new wife, Kay Elliott-Strange during their homecoming. At the same time, she also extends her hospitality to the newly divorced Mrs. Strange #1, Audrey, who lived in the seaside Saltcreek estate as a child, after her parents’ accidental deaths. Frankly, Lady Tressilian finds their mutual convergence stranger than the various Stranges seem to.

Inevitably, things get super-awkward when Neville openly flirts and charms his ex. Yet, he is much annoyed by the sudden appearance of his cousin, Thomas Royde, who continues to accuse of Strange of deliberately causing the death of their childhood playmate. Despite falling out of favor with Lady Tressilian, he has come hat-in-hand to beg for money. Through letters, he lobbied her paid companion, Mary Aldin, to his cause, while implying a romantic interest. However, he still carries a torch for Audrey Strange.

Obviously, there was a lot of tension in Saltcreek, even before Lady Tressilian called Mr. Treves, the family solicitor and sweeper-of-things-under-the-rug, to revise her will. Soon thereafter, she meets a violent, premature end. Inspector Leach will investigate, but only because his suicide attempt fails. Somehow, the powerful rip-currents spit him back onto land, rather than dashing him against the rocks. The WWI veteran remains tormented by PTSD and survivor’s guilt, but his suspects’ entitled smugness quickly sharpens his edge.

Compared to some recent Christie adaptations (especially Ordeal by Innocence), this Zero is relatively faithful, but Pascal Thomas’s French adaptation is still superior—and it allowed good old Battle to be good old Bataille. Nevertheless, it is nice to see a veteran play a major role in a series that is not inherently military-themed—even if he is a veteran of the First World War.

Regardless, screenwriter Rachel Bennette fully embraces Christie’s central theme, exploring the precipitating issues that give rise to the murder, just as much as the investigation. This production is well served by Clarke Peters’ stately voice explaining “point zero” as the moment “the murder is seated.” Considering Neville Strange is a professional tennis player, he might have called it “point love,” but that might have confused the less sporting. Bennette still capitalizes on the tennis connection, gathering all Leach’s suspects around the Saltcreek court, instead of the drawing room.

This is also a consistently strong cast, starting with Peters, who perfectly personifies Mr. Treves’ dignified craftiness. Though not Battle, Matthew Rhys is deeply compelling as the haunted but still incisive Insp. Leach—essentially, he is like a tragic Interwar Columbo.

Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, on HBO Max

The word "Mogwai” roughly means “evil spirit” or “demon” in Cantonese, but the CCP does not want Cantonese spoken anymore, especially not in Hong Kong. Of course, they wouldn’t accept a Chinese villain either, even though the prequel under consideration is set in 1920 Shanghai. Yet, evil criminal mastermind Riley Greene is by far the funniest character in this animated series, so do not even try to root against him when showrunners Tze Chun & Brendan Hay’s ten-episode Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai premieres Tuesday on [HBO] Max.

Before Gizmo the Mogwai ended up in Mr. Wing’s Chinatown curiosities shop, he was unceremoniously plucked out of the Valley of Jade and literally dropped into the human world by a bird of prey. Young Sam Wing’s irresponsible adventurer grandfather recognizes the dangers Mogwai represent to humanity, especially if they get wet and eat after midnight, so he prepares his grandson to return Gizmo to his fabled home. Unfortunately, Greene and his henchmen get to the Wings first.

Most of his goons show little initiative, but Elle (who is ambiguously "anime"-looking) is the exception. She will help Sam and Gizmo escape, but young Wing remains distrustful of the “Mary Sue” street urchin. However, he needs Elle’s street smarts to elude Greene and return Gizmo to his home. He is also worried about his parents, whom Greene holds hostage, for leverage. His grandfather will not be able to help either, because Greene ingested him, using “pearl magic.”

Poor Sam Wing could not inspire any less confidence as a hero, which is a problem, considering has the most screen-time of all the human, non-Mogwai characters. Anybody we have to spend this much time with should at least be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Likewise, Elle’s relentlessly abrasive attitude quickly becomes grating.

Of course, little Gizmo is still cute, but let’s be honest. He is a terrible “father.” As in Joe Dante’s original film, his offspring are never as sweet-tempered as he is, even during their furry stage, and they seem to want the evil transformation caused by a post-midnight snack. Why can’t he ever pass along his adorable genes?

The one thing Chun and Hay generally get right is the tone. Like the films, they combine a “gee-whiz” sense of wonder with some outrageously over-the-top mayhem. This show has a high body count, produced in extraordinarily violent ways. Even though Dante joined as a “consulting producer,” real fans will be disappointed that no character in Secrets of the Mogwai resembles his late, beloved crony, Dick Miller.

Death and Nightingales, on Starz

In 1885, Northern Ireland was a land divided by religion. So is Beth Winters’ house. Her stepfather Billy Winters is a wealthy English Protestant landlord, whereas she is not. Nor was her late mother Catherine, who secretly knew she was already pregnant with Beth when she married the hard-drinking Englishman. The Winters family dynamics have only gotten worse since her death and finally come to a head in creator-director Allan Cubitt’s 3-part Death and Nightingales, which premieres Sunday on Starz.

As a young girl, Winters heard her stepfather angrily disavow her and it hurt—even after he disavowed his disavowal in a more sober moment. Regardless, since her mother died, he treated Beth more like a servant than a daughter, especially when he inappropriately visited her bedroom late at night. She has always deeply resented him, yet their awkward shared history created a sort of dysfunctional bond between them. However, she finally resolves to make a break when she meets the dashing Liam Ward, Winters’ new IRA-supporting tenant.

Despite some mixed emotions, the smitten Winters agrees to slip Old Billy a bromide mickey and empty his safe, so she and Ward may elope and start a new life together. Fatefully, it will all go down on the day of her 23^rd birthday. Of course, this kind of business never goes according to plan.

Evidently, Cubitt rather faithfully adapted Eugene McCabe’s similar-titled novel, but a bit pruning and narrative concentration would not have been amiss. Frankly, the entire first episode is ponderously slow and not especially eventful. The middle hour picks up the pace a bit, while the conclusion delivers some pretty intense, slap-in-the-face drama.

Ann Skelly really delivers down the stretch as the surprisingly resourceful Beth Winters. She has moments that largely redeem the series. Unfortunately, viewers have to slog through a lot of aimless angst and melodrama to get to them. Ordinarily, it would be quite entertaining to watch Matthew Rhys rage and roar as Billy Winters, during the episode one and two, but Cubitt makes him such an unsavory, predatory figure, it is impossible to embrace him as a love-to-hate character.

Carion’s Come What May

During the attempted mass migration of 1940 often dubbed “The French Exodus,” it was easy to tell the refugees from the aggressors. Generally, the former spoke French and the latter spoke German. However, that put a dissident German like Hans in a difficult spot. Overshadowed by outrages like the Velodrome Round-up, the ill-fated evacuation gets its dramatic due in Christian Carion’s Come What May (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

As a critic of the National Socialist regime, Max found it advisable to leave Germany with his young son Max in a hurry. To avoid deportation, they try to pass for French Christians of ruddy peasant stock. Frankly, they are not so convincing, but the residents of their Pas-de-Calais hamlet are inclined to simply live and let live, especially Hans’ yeoman farmer boss Paul, who also happens to be the mayor. Unfortunately, this peaceful interlude will not last long, as viewers should expect. Eventually, Hans is arrested and interned for misrepresenting his citizenship, leaving Max in the care of the town’s schoolteacher, Suzanne. Shortly thereafter, the Maginot Line caves, setting off the town’s desperate flight from the invading Germans.

Supposedly, there was a plan in place for the townspeople to be sheltered in Dieppe in the case of such an eventuality, but getting there will be quite the trick. The roads will be clogged with other internal refugees, at least until the Germans start their strafing. Of course, their supplies quickly dwindle and communication is haphazard at best. Nevertheless, when Hans is released on humanitarian grounds, he joins forces with Percy, a stranded junior officer of the Black Watch, and together they manage to follow the notes Max leaves for him on school house black boards.

Carion makes it clear what a sweeping, tragic, and ultimately futile chapter of French history this truly was, but his but his primary focus falls on the intimate survivors’ stories of father, son, and the displaced villagers. August Diehl (from The Counterfeiters) and Joshio Marlon are totally believable and often quite touching as the exiled father and son. Olivier Gourmet also deftly walks the line between rugged salt-of-the-earth-ness and Gallic pigheadedness as the Mayor. However, Matthew Rhys (The Americans, Death Comes to Pemberley) steals the film several times over as the dashing Percy. With his casual panache and pencil moustache, the Welsh Rhys playing the Scotts officer brings to mind the British David Niven, who really executed missions behind enemy lines as a commando with the British Army’s “Phantom” Regiment.

Inspired by Carion’s own family history, CWM helps humanize and contextualize the French wartime experience. It is often grueling, but there are moments that pay-off in spades. The aptly stirring Ennio Morricone score is certainly an additional selling point. Recommended for Francophones and fans of Rhys, Come What May opens this Friday (9/9) in New York, at the Paris Theatre uptown and the Angelika Film Center downtown.

Death Comes to Pemberley: the Darcys, the Wickhams, and a Corpse

Just loosening up a little represented quite a character development arc for Mr. Darcy, whereas Wickham remained just a cad. Still, he would not seem to be the sort of chap to commit murder, but the circumstantial evidence says otherwise. Ironically, Wickham’s only hope to avoid the gallows lies with the Darcys who loathe him so well in Death Comes to Pemberley (promo here), P.D. James’ whodunit sequel to Pride and Prejudice, which airs the next two Sundays as part of the current season of PBS’s Masterpiece.

After six years, the Darcys are still reasonably happily married. Elizabeth Darcy (nee Bennett) is a kind and understanding mistress of Pemberley, counterbalancing her sometimes gruff husband. Her sister Lydia is not to be received at Pemberley, especially not with her mercenary husband, George Wickham. However, they are determined to crash the Darcys’ formal ball, in the company of Wickham’s former army buddy, Captain Martin Denny.

Unfortunately, there will be no dancing for anyone. During the coach ride to Pemberley, Wickham and Denny have a nasty row that spills over into the ominous woods. Shots are fired, with Wickham subsequently discovered with the body, babbling “it’s all my fault.” To avoid any appearance of impropriety, Darcy must hand over the investigation to Sir Selwyn Hardcastle, an old family rival. Hardcastle has no sympathy for uppity commoners like Wickham. Darcy does not suffer them gladly either, but he is tied to Wickham by marriage. Should Wickham’s sensational motives for murder be exposed, it would shame the family and possibly even jeopardize the continued health of Pemberley.

Frankly, there are equal parts Downton Abbey and Nick & Nora Charles in DCTP, which makes sense considering how much PBS viewers love drama based on estate management and scandal suppression. Penelope Keith even parachutes in for a scene as Lady Catherine de Bourgh, very much in the tradition of Dame Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess.

Neither Darcy really sets out to crack the case either, they just respond as events develop. If not the most intricately plotted Brit mystery, DCTP is still quite winning thanks to the perfect casting and elegant chemistry of its Darcys. Matthew Rhys plays Mr. Darcy with a mercurial temper and sly wit that are great fun to watch, while Anna Maxwell Martin’s Elizabeth Darcy is sensitive but down to earth in a manner that should pass muster with Austen-philes. They are terrific together, elevating the romance and strained marriage melodrama well above our expectations.

Matthew Goode’s rakish shtick certainly suits Wickham and Jenna Colman is convincingly annoying as Lydia Wickham, but the X-factor in the large supporting cast is unquestionably Trevor Eve, who turns a few surprises and rather humanizes the curmudgeonly Hardcastle over the course of DCTP. In contrast, even by British standards, Eleanor Tomlinson and James Norton are tragically vanilla as Darcy’s slightly scandal-tinged sister Georgiana and her progressive would be suitor, respectively.

Veteran Brit TV director Daniel Percival frames some picturesque scenes and the period production values are all up to BBC/PBS Masterpiece code. It is also a veritable cavalcade of familiar British mystery veterans, such as Rhys (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Scapegoat), Martin (The Bletchley Circle), Goode (Dancing on the Edge), Eve (In the Heat of the Sun), and Rebecca Front (Chief Supt. Innocent in Lewis), which should further please fans. A pretty sturdy costume drama with a corpse, Death Comes to Pemberley should satisfy both the regular mystery viewers and the Austen cos-players when it airs tomorrow night (10/26) and next Sunday (11/2) on most PBS outlets nationwide.

Scapegoat: Du Maurier’s Dead Ringer

If her uncle had not been such an idiot, Elizabeth II never would have been Queen.  Due to his dubious judgment, his brother’s daughter will soon ascend to the throne.  The caddish Johnny Spence half-jokingly describes the days leading up to her coronation a period of monarch-less anarchy.  It will indeed make a fitting backdrop for Charles Sturridge’s completely Anglicized adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s The Scapegoat (trailer here), which airs in syndication on participating PBS stations, including Chicago’s WTTW this coming Saturday night.

John Standing has just been downsized out of job as a boarding school teacher.  With no family to support and lacking any significant ambitions or prospects, he sets out on vaguely defined walking tour.  Stopping at a seedy public house, he is startled to come face to face with his dead ringer, the wastrel Johnny Spence.  After a night of imbibing with the charming but overbearing Spence, Standing is surprised to wake up and find the man has absconded with his anonymity, leaving him to take his position of wealth and privilege.

Unfortunately, Standing soon deduces the Spence family fortunes are sagging.  His doppelganger was hoping to save their glass foundry with a Hail Mary business deal, but he rather doubts the playboy pulled it off.  However, he is quite charmed to meet the man’s spirited young daughter (Mary Lou, a.k.a. Piglet) and his nervous wife Frances.  Conversely, he is quite uncomfortable around Nina, Spence’s sister-in-law with whom he seems to be having an affair with.  Yet, nobody seems to suspect his reluctant impersonation, not even his resentful brother Paul or their morphine addicted mother, Lady Spence.  Frankly, the family might just be better off with the new and improved Johnny Spence, but the old one is still out there, up to no good.

Produced by ITV, Scapegoat is a nifty little thriller that had a spot of film festival play before its American television run. Transferred from the south of France to post-war Britain, Sturridge’s adaptation is tightly paced and uses the impending coronation as a clever metaphor.  As the director of most of the beloved Brideshead Revisited miniseries as well as the masterful A Handful of Dust, Sturridge has a keen feel for Twentieth Century British period pieces.  He displays a nice touch with Scapegoat, combining a Downton-esque vibe with film noir-ish elements.

Logically, Sir Alec Guinness (the master of multiple parts) had first crack at the Standing/Spence role in Robert Hamer’s 1959 feature film.  Yet, Matthew Rhys (now probably best known for FX’s The Americans) steps into his shoes admirably well.  In fact, this might be his strongest small screen work, eclipsing his suitably brooding John Jasper in The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  His Spence is charismatically wicked, but he also makes a convincingly confused and depressed everyman as Standing.  Alice Orr-Ewing is a bit vanilla as poor Frances, but Andrew Scott (Jim Moriarty in Sherlock) adds some edgy energy into the mix as Paul Spence.  Yet, Sturridge’s wife and Brideshead co-star Phoebe Nicholls occasionally upstages everyone as the smart-than-her-employers housekeeper, Charlotte.

Altogether, The Scapegoat is quite cinematic by television standards.  Handsome looking and intelligently written, it is definitely recommended for fans of Brit mysteries and literary dramas when it airs on select PBS stations later in the month.