(courtesy IMP Awards)
SNAPSHOT
“Executive produces of Stranger Things welcome you to a new community.” In the sun-drenched expanse of the New Mexico desert lies The Boroughs, a picturesque retirement community promising its residents the time of their lives. But for new arrival Sam Cooper (Alfred Molina), paradise feels more like a prison. Everything changes when a terrifying nighttime encounter reveals that something monstrous is stalking the manicured cul-de-sacs. Dismissed by powers that be as another confused old man, Sam finds unlikely allies in a band of neighborhood misfits: a sharp-witted former journalist, a spiritual seeker, a cynical music manager, a brilliant doctor running out of options. Overlooked & underestimated, these unlikely heroes must band together to unravel the dark truth at the heart of The Boroughs … before time runs out …The Boroughs is a series created & showrun & written by the two screenwriters Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, both writers on The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Life in a Year, and The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim previously. With episodes directed by Ben Taylor, Augustine Frizzell, Kyle Patrick Alvarez. Executive produced by Duffer Brothers & Hilary Leavitt for Upside Down Pictures, Ben Taylor, Jeffrey Addiss, Will Matthews. With music by John Paesano. Filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (courtesy First Showing)
Storytelling across all media has always favoured the wholly unsettling but endlessly intriguing idea that nothing can ever been as good as it seems.
It’s not only, you suspect, quite realistic, but also the path to all kinds of compelling narrative possibilities, and the latest show that seems to bear that out is The Boroughs, where a harmless retirement community dedicated to people living out their golden years in paradisiacal splendour looks to have a dark side.
A very DARK side.
But while the initial urge of many people is to drink cocktails and enjoy what the time that remains, a group of residents can’t just sit back and let the dark truth of the place go unexamined.
They need to get to the bottom of the mystery … or die trying? Not beyond the realms of possibility in a show where the end of life looks to be rushing up to embrace what little remains of it.
The Boroughs debuts on Netflix on 21 May.