Netflix ages up the Stranger Things formula for this thoughtful supernatural adventure.
Retired engineer Sam Cooper (the great Alfred Molina, and a keep an eye peeled for a fun Easter egg from one of his early roles) is not happy to be moving into the Boroughs, the titular retirement community. Mainly because his beloved wife has just died, and what were supposed to be their golden years together now looks like a long, lonely road to the grave. He even notes that the previous occupant of his new digs most likely died there.
Luckily, he quickly – if somewhat reluctantly – makes new friends, including former TV weatherman, Jack Willard (Bill Pullman), cool stoner couple Art and Judy Daniels (Clarke Peters and Alfre Woodard), terminally ill and acerbic former doctor Wally Baker (Denis O’Hare), and retired music manager Renee (Geena Davis), comparing tales of medical woe and bonding around the fire pit. Things, it seems, could be worse.
And they are! Something is preying on the elderly residents of the picture perfect desert community. Could it have something to do with the Stepford-smiling CEO and his wife (Seth Numrich and Alice Kremelberg), not to mention the secretive Manor, where they stash dementia patients? Probably. Will our elderly heroes join forces to solve the mystery like OAP Goonies? More than likely. Is it a lot of fun? Hell yeah.
Stranger Things creators the Duffer brothers are on executive producing duties here, but The Boroughs is created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, who also gave Netflix‘s superb (and largely forgotten – you should check it out!) The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. Nonetheless, the comparisons to the Duffers’ ’80s-set opus are obvious and apt. Once again we have a group of outsiders coming together to combat a weird menace, and they’re also marginalised because of their age, only it’s because they’re at the other end of the temporal spectrum.
It’s steeped in that classic Spielbergian sense of wonder and adventure, and it’s not the first time we’ve gotten that in this kind of context – the ‘Berg himself dabbled in old age fantasy/sci-fi with his “Kick the Can” segment of 1983’s The Twilight Zone: The Movie, along with 1987’s Batteries Not Included, while Ron Howard gave us Cocoon in 1985. Having said that, it’s not well-explored territory but it’s often fertile, ironically enough. Things hit different when you’re closer to the end than the beginning.
And so there’s a sense of melancholy and loss permeating The Boroughs, even when Sam and the gang are trading quips, indulging in a little B&E, or passing around a joint. Gallows humour – and it’s all gallows after a while, folks – hides real pain. Sam is haunted by Bruce Springsteen‘s “Thunder Road”, the song they were dancing to when his wife suddenly passed. Art and Judy struggle with the emotional fallout that comes from their ostensibly open marriage. Wally, a gay man, rages on behalf of the friends he was unable to save during the AIDS epidemic. And all are grappling with the fact that, no matter nice the Boroughs are, they’ve all been siloed off out of the way so the world can keep turning without them.
Those are heavy themes, but they’re handled deftly enough so that they never overwhelm the proceedings. Hell, Sam’s character arc is all about learning not to wallow – luckily there’s a fun mystery at hand to motivate him. But the real strength of The Boroughs is its cast – it’s just so much fun to see actors of this caliber bounce off each other. the supernatural goings-on are merely the icing on the retirement cake.
The Boroughs is streaming on Netflix now, with all eight episodes available.
MORE IN News
