(courtesy IMP Awards)
Any time a streaming series subverts expectations it’s a very good thing.
While there’s nothing wrong of course coming straight out and delivering what it says it’s going to since sometimes all we need is uncomplicated narrative certainty, having a series take its initial, obvious premise and run with it in some very interesting and surprisingly heartfelt directions always challenges viewers in a really good way.
That’s even more pronounced in the current hyper heavy content surrounds of the digital age where we often exposed to trailers and other promotional material to such an invasively expansive extent that there’s often little left to genuinely surprise and delight us.
You will likely have guessed by now that The Boroughs, which looks at first glance like Stranger Things meets The Golden Girls in the very best of ways, is one of those shows that very much does not lay all its narrative cards out on the table.
You would be well and truly forgiven for thinking that its one of those shows full of full-on horror where body counts mount and no one is safe in a gated retirement which promises that all your worries and cares are way behind you.
The owners of the titular community, the smiley, squeaky clean and unnervingly prepossessed Blaine and Annalise Shaw (Seth Numrich and Alice Kremelberg respectively) certainly guarantee that The Boroughs is not the end of your life but rather the beginning of a whole new one.
Alas, while that makes for a slick marketing campaign, and the TVs in the community don’t tire of showing the promotional video to the great chagrin of new resident Sam Cooper (Alfred Molina) who’s arrived in his new mid-century modern home deeply angry at his new residence, his daughter Claire (Jena Malone) and the tragic recent loss of his beloved wife Lily ( Jane Kaczmarek), there’s a vast gap between marketing hype and day-to-day lived experience.
Well, not initially at least.
Sam, quite against his grief-stricken will, is quickly ushered into the close circle of his cul-de-sac neighbours including Art and Judy Daniels (Clarke Peters and Alfre Woodard respectively), Renee (Geena Davis) and her gay BFF Wally Baker (Denis O’Hare) and Jack Willard (Bill Pullman) and it looks like maybe he could be sort of kind of happy in a place he was sure just 24 hours earlier he didn’t want to be in.
It’s all BBQs and fire pits and community centre events but fairly quickly in the first episode, one of those people in the paragraph above is very, very dead and not at the hands of anything human (that’s hinted at in the trailer which suggests The Boroughs plays host to something spindly and spidery and definitely not human.
It’s at this point what looks like a standard creature feature goes in some very cool and deeply heartfelt directions.
While there is the expected hunt for the monster, which brings Sam, an engineer who thought he no longer had a use for any of his work life skills or interests, back to life with purpose and the camaraderie of unexpected friendship and even found family, and a health dose of scary and wondrous magical realism depending on the situation (can TVs feel glittery and magical? Yes they can and you will feel as wonder-filled as Sam and the others), what really comes to mark The Boroughs as something compellingly special is how beautifully it understands and empathetically explores the human condition.
That is most obviously evident with Sam who misses his beloved Lily so much that he begins to see her everywhere, his heart breaking when he thinks she is beside him in bed or speaking with him or simply standing somewhere where he can see her.
This could simply be dismissed as the overactive desperate need of a grieving heart to get back what it has tragically lost, even if it means twisting reality to suit what a terribly sad heart is craving, but while The Boroughs treats the manifestations of Sam’s grief as entirely understandable and normal, it also rather wonderfully wonderful there is something deeper going on.
It’s this mix of raw, vulnerable humanity and magical realism that sets the series apart as something truly special and takes what could have simply been a brilliantly good creature feature and gives it an impressive amount of truly affecting emotional heft.
To expand further on how emotionally impactful The Boroughs would be to wander far too far into spoiler territory but suffice to say that as the story builds, and it builds perfectly, deftly balancing mystery and satisfying answers, horror and grounded everyday humanness, you are drawn into the emotional fabric of the story more and more.
Sure, the monster is the thing in one sense, though even that rather creatively does not play out as you expect, swelling your heart as much as it thrills the senses, but more than that, is the way the show movingly explores why people act the way they do, how even good intention can become malevolent over the corrupting passage of time, and that a little kindness can absolutely move huge mountains and defeat the most implacable of foes.
In fact, in this wondrously told and vibrantly imaginative show, kindness is a weapon of the very best and most powerful kind, unleashing a titanic battle of good against evil that is nuanced, affecting and awe inspiringly epic, visually, emotionally and narratively.
While The Boroughs does indeed solve its monster mystery in ways that will profoundly move and delight you, it succeeds even more in exploring what it is like to get older and to lose power and agency and connection only to then find it is still available to you and that once used, with the support of friends and a vitality you thought lost to past youth, it can remake your world and those of others in life changing and truly transformative ways.