The Watch List: The Shows To Try Right Now

With Widow's Bay, a horror-comedy hybrid on Apple TV+, every episode feels like somebody found an unpublished Stephen King novella and handed it to the people behind Parks & Recreation. To be fair, creator Katie Dippold wrote for Parks and Rec, so we guess that tracks. And with Hiro Murai helping steer the ship, they've pulled off one of television's trickiest balancing acts. The series follows the mayor of a tiny New England island trying to turn a cursed fishing town into a tourist destination. The locals insist the island is cursed. He insists it needs better marketing. Then summer arrives, the ferries fill up, and the island's ghost stories stop feeling like small-town superstition. Watching Widow's Bay feels like a parade of small-town folklore coming to life: a supernatural fog tied to disappearances and deaths, the Haunted Inn — which is exactly what you think it is — and monsters around every corner. There's a killer clown, a town witch, a murderous boogeyman, and the grandaddy of them all — the island's curmudgeonly undead founder. But if horror isn't normally your thing, don't panic. Widow's Bay is spooky, but it's never punishing. The monsters may be trying to kill people, but the show remains far more interested in the town's oddballs and eccentricities, than traumatizing its audience. That's where the cast comes in. Matthew Rhys is terrific as Tom, a mayor who keeps discovering that local folklore wasn't folklore at all. Stephen Root is a blast as Wyck, the island's resident curse enthusiast. And Kate O'Flynn rounds things out as Patricia, the eccentric side-kick. If we're nitpicking, a couple episodes lost us — one going back in time, one reaching for the campier stuff. But Stephen Root comes barging in raving that they're all doomed, and it's hard to dwell on that for very long. Spooky, funny, and genuinely original — Widow's Bay delivers. Watch it.

With this pulpy psychological thriller on Apple TV+, it's impossible to go a full episode without thinking about Scorsese and De Niro's disturbing 1991 film. That's what happens when Javier Bardem is this terrifying as the maniac Max Cady. For once, the comparison feels like a compliment. When a notorious killer walks out of prison after fourteen years, he begins a slow, methodical campaign of psychological warfare against defense attorney Anna Bowden (Amy Adams) and prosecutor Tom Bowden (Patrick Wilson), the husband-and-wife legal team he blames for stealing his life. Cape Fear wants you uncomfortable before the title card even hits. A lumbering score plays over a camera-negative montage of Cady's eyes and a family barbecue, making a backyard cookout feel like the opening scene of a nightmare. It's not horror, technically, but it's deeply unsettling and packs real jump scares along the way. Trust us, we've jumped. Bardem plays Cady like a man who's spent years rehearsing exactly how unsettling he wants to be — a mosaic of eyeballs tattooed across his back, the Grim Reaper staring out from between his shoulder blades. Every scene with him feels like a held breath. You keep waiting for him to do the thing you know he's going to do, and the not-knowing-when is the whole engine of the show. But Cady isn't the only one with something to hide. Anna and Tom keep getting hairline cracks in their story — small enough you could miss them, big enough that you start wondering if "innocent victims" is the wrong way to be watching this. That's the show actually working: not "will Cady get them," but "do they deserve what's coming." It's not flawless — the troubled Bowden teenagers feel a bit tropey. But that's a minor leak in a show otherwise operating on a different frequency than anything else on TV right now. Watch it now, while it's still airing — and don't be shocked if this score climbs by the finale.