There are monsters in The Boroughs, the new Netflix series executive produced by Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers. But the most pressing concern on the show isn’t a physical menace. Instead, it’s time. As in, not having enough time—but also having too much time to kill.
That’s probably not a surprise considering the setting for The Boroughs, which comes from showrunners, creators, and executive producers Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews. The series is named for a retirement community whose residents live in a carefully curated environment while facing the last chapters of their lives.
A brief opening scene featuring genre legend Dee Wallace lets us know there’s freaky danger lurking in this midcentury-modern enclave, which is in the middle of nowhere and yet still has a gatehouse monitoring who goes in or out. (io9 watched the full eight-episode season ahead of this spoiler-free review.)
Retired engineer Sam (Alfred Molina) enters the Boroughs very reluctantly. He’s prodded along by his daughter, Claire (Jena Malone), who’s loving and supportive but also losing patience with him. They’re both sharply feeling the recent loss of family matriarch Lilly (Jane Kaczmarek), a charismatic presence in flashbacks, but Sam is stubbornly reluctant to open up about his grief. Sam and Lilly were supposed to move to the Boroughs together, making Sam’s relocation to this strange place even more painful.
Claire lives in nearby Albuquerque, so you can see why her parents chose this place. But the New Mexico desert has a baked-in association that The Boroughs draws on from the start; nobody comes right out and says “Roswell,” but the implication is there, underlined by the score’s tendency to wink at the Twilight Zone theme. The town’s retro-futuristic architecture fits nicely into that atomic age vibe, and there’s also a cheerfully dystopian quality that evokes a well-worn trope: the planned community that seems too good to be true.
Of course, it doesn’t seem at all good to Sam, who’s enraged by the idea of staying there, despite not really having an alternative. He feels patronized and like a prisoner, and one of his first orders of business is to request a contract release from the Boroughs’ smooth-talking CEO, Blaine Shaw (Seth Numrich), who runs the place with his glamorous wife, Anneliese (Alice Kremelberg).
Sam’s urge to flee understandably intensifies when he has a scary encounter with a resident with dementia. But he starts to soften when he meets his neighbors—who soon become his new best friends.
Over eight episodes, The Boroughs introduces a mystery that ties back to that opening scene, bringing sci-fi horror into what’s recently become one of Netflix’s favorite plots: turning a bunch of razor-sharp retirees loose on a high-stakes puzzle (see also the first season of A Man on the Inside and the feature film The Thursday Murder Club). It also evokes another Netflix standby—Stranger Things, naturally, and all the Spielberg tropes it brings—as well as, inevitably, Cocoon. The Golden Girls also gets an in-universe shout-out.
In fact, the story is maybe The Boroughs’ weakest element, simply because it is so familiar. Even if you haven’t seen the works that influenced it, there are some fairly heavy-handed clues pointing toward the secrets Sam and his pals are poised to uncover.
However, even if you have a pretty good idea of where things are going, getting there is an absolute pleasure with this cast of characters. Molina is fantastic as a man who resists facing the life changes he’s been forced into but also can’t help drawing on his sense of justice (and genius-level ability to build practically anything) when the need arises.
It’s not hard to see why Sam quickly finds his people among his fellow cul-de-sac dwellers, who include the gregarious Jack (Bill Pullman), married ex-hippies Judy (Alfre Woodard) and Art (Clarke Peters), edgy art teacher Renee (Geena Davis), and former doctor Wally (Denis O’Hare). Everyone brings some special quality to the friend group, with O’Hare a particular standout as Wally, whose zest for life is tempered by a past filled with loss and his own terminal cancer diagnosis. It’s fun just hanging out with these guys, ordinary folks who confront the extraordinary and still kick ass even though most of them are in their 70s.
But of course, The Boroughs has monsters to deal with, as previously noted. There are literal monsters as well as plenty of monsters of the human variety. Bubbling beneath the series’ stylized portrayal of retirement communities, especially the facility that houses residents who can’t live independently, is commentary on how elderly people tend to be treated. Even in a place as fancy as The Boroughs, disrespect and even outright cruelty occur.
That’s on top of the terrors that Sam and his friends wouldn’t believe if they didn’t see them with their own eyes—and then must file alongside the existential dread they’re already experiencing on a daily basis.
It’s tempting to compare The Boroughs to Stranger Things. Even aside from their Netflix-Duffer Brothers ties, both shows are about friends protecting each other while investigating an institution that’s hiding a supernatural mystery. Both lean heavily into nostalgia, albeit from vastly different eras.
But Stranger Things is about relationships between kids coming of age and getting to battle creatures as part of that experience. The Boroughs has deeper, more mature concerns. It gives us characters that have lived full lives and know they won’t continue on forever but are still determined to go out on their own terms, and with all the dignity they deserve.
Yes, it’s a bit predictable and can occasionally get a little sentimental too. But the wonderful performances alone are enough to recommend watching the series—Molina and O’Hare especially, as well as Woodard and Peters as a couple who’ve been together for decades and still have new things to learn about each other. Really, the spooky sci-fi stuff is just a bonus.
The Boroughs arrives May 21 on Netflix.
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