‘The Boroughs’ Review: Netflix’s Duffers-Produced Sci-Fi Thriller

The question of time, and how best to spend it, is front of mind for the characters of Netflix’s The Boroughs. As Boomers living out their last years in an idyllic desert retirement community, they’re never not aware of how quickly time can move, how little of it they might have left, how much of it they’ve wasted already or fear wasting still.

There is some irony, then, in the fact that the series’ greatest flaw might be misallocation of this precious resource. While the sci-fi thriller proves a fine enough way to while away a few hours, with a plot that boils down to “Stranger Things but old people” and an A-list cast that’d turn the grey hairs of A Man on the Inside green with envy, I left thinking too much of its eight 45-minute episodes had been spent on the former, at the expense of the latter.

The Stranger Things comparison, by the way, is neither incidental nor unintentional. Matt and Ross Duffer serve as executive producers for the series from The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance creators Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, and it shows in the sweet-spooky tone, the CG critters, the touches of nostalgia (one character’s hobby is fixing up old TVs, of the sort even 70somethings aren’t using anymore).

Alfred Molina leads the starry ensemble as Sam, a Boroughs newcomer who has no intention whatsoever of enjoying his time there, to the exasperation of his overtaxed daughter, Claire (Jena Malone). He’s only moved in because he and his wife, Lilly (Jane Kaczmarek), had paid for a spot before her recent passing, and he plans to stay only until he can convince the CEO, Blaine (Seth Numrich), to refund the money. But things change once he meets Jack (Bill Pullman), a gregarious neighbor who insists on throwing a welcome barbecue in Sam’s honor.

That party, which comes midway through the Ben Taylor-directed premiere, is the single most delightful scene The Boroughs has to offer. Over burgers and beers, the cul-de-sac crew — including the boho-glam Renee (Geena Davis), the sardonic Wally (Dennis O’Hare, a standout among standouts) and ex-hippies Art (Clarke Davis) and Judy (Alfre Woodard) — gossip about their other neighbors, rib each other about their respective body counts (the sex kind, not the death kind), trade their gnarliest medical anecdotes. In short, they just hang. It’s a blast. As Sam takes in the scene I did the same — marveling at the assemblage of talent, luxuriating in their chemistry, getting excited for whatever might come next.

Unfortunately, it turns out to be the last time The Boroughs really lets itself indulge in its greatest asset, that ensemble cast, in quite that way. Later that night, Sam is awoken by strange noises outside his house, and upon investigating discovers a giant spider-legged monster with a taste for human fluids. And while the EMTs he reports it to are dismissive, Sam comes to believe the creature is somehow connected to bizarre ramblings from his home’s previous tenant, a dementia patient (Ed Begley Jr.) now residing in the community’s long-term care facility.

From there, the rest of the cul-de-sac start to catch wind of the mystery as well, joining forces to fight back against whatever’s lurking in the night. Eventually. First, The Boroughs scatters the core clique to the winds, sending Judy spiraling into grief over a dead ex-lover, Wally scrambling for a miracle to cure his terminal cancer and so on.

Individually, none of these storylines are without their charms. The best of them, Renee’s flirtation with a younger security guard (Vida‘s Carlos Miranda) has the giddy sweetness of a rom-com, and even the wheel-spinniest of the bunch — Art’s solo spiritual journey into the desert — has Clarke’s thoroughly winsome performance to recommend it. But painted in strokes too broad and hasty to draw out any nuance, and missing the warm chemistry that sparks whenever the characters are allowed to savor each other’s company, they add up to something less than the sum of their parts.

Meanwhile, the mystery taking up so much of the show’s time runs out of steam well before the answers are revealed. Semi-interesting clues are discovered only to go nowhere. Real scares and surprises prove few and far between. Scenes that should provoke wonder for either their natural beauty (sunsets over the endless desert sky) or their supernatural strangeness (glowing dots scattering across the air like stars in a galaxy) are undermined by the signature Netflix aesthetic of flat lighting and muddy coloring. Even the villains seem underwhelmed by their own one-dimensional motives: “Why does anyone do anything?” one scoffs when asked to explain himself.

To be sure, the series even at its clunkiest is never less than perfectly watchable; any show that sees Woodard shooting at monsters or O’Hare preparing to thwack one with a meat cleaver can’t help but be at least a little amusing. But it’s a letdown for a story with bright early gleams of potential. Built around the poignant concept of a monster stealing time from those who have the least of it to spare, aimed at toppling our own fears around aging, and brought to life by a cast with more than enough talent to land the humor, the heart and the horror inherent in all those ideas, The Boroughs could have been an all-timer.

Instead, I found myself doing precisely what the mourning Sam has to learn not to do: dwelling on the past — longing to return once more to that campfire from the first episode, savoring those precious few moments when we were allowed to relish the simple joys of really great company.