The Duffer Brothers, creators of Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” didn’t invent Netflix’s “The Boroughs,” but they did executive produce this worthy successor to their first hit series.
Created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews (“The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance”), “The Boroughs” is “Stranger Things” crossed with “Cocoon” as it follows residents of an elderly community who come under attack by supernatural creatures.
It would be easy to make a sloppy version of “The Boroughs,” but Addiss and Matthews, blessed with a strong cast of veteran actors, develop the show’s characters with distinguishing features. And the show’s score by John Paesano sounds like it’s straight out of a 1980s Spielberg film.
Sam Cooper (Alfred Molina) is new to The Boroughs, a New Mexico, desert-set retirement community, and he doesn’t want to be there even as his new neighbor (Bill Pullman) tries to welcome Sam to a cul-de-sac that’s also home to Judy (Alfre Woodard) and Art (Clarke Peters), who along with Renee (Geena Davis) and Wally (Denis O’Hare), become the core group that discovers and sets out to vanquish the monsters they discover in their midst.
Early episodes of “The Boroughs” are stronger than those deeper in the season — again, this could have been a movie; eight episodes is at least two too many — but the show’s general vibe is upbeat and there are a few surprising twists along the way (although the show’s villain is exactly who viewers will guess it to be from the jump).
In a virtual news conference Tuesday, showrunners said one challenge of a series with “a haunted house setup” is that it can make viewers question why characters don’t just leave it.
“The Boroughs is a place that we want you to want to save,” showrunner Will Matthews said.
And though it goes against frequent millennial and Gen Z critiques about their elders, it’s this group of Boomers who are the heroes.
“It is a generation, probably, that changed the culture, the status quo more than any other one,” Woodard said. “What’s really fun about this, and instructive and inspiring about this, is that even in the retirement community, things start to happen — bad things and really weird, scary things — but nobody says, ‘Oh, we don’t know what to do.’ What happens? The boomers saddle up, they get together, and they go to stop it.”
O’Hare sees a metaphor in how the monster attacks residents of The Boroughs by sucking out their brain fluid.
“What do the old people have?” O’Hare said. “Experience, wisdom, knowledge, life and history, and that ends up being a precious commodity that the monsters suck out all the stuff and turn it into gold.”
Mister Rogers concert
The Fred Rogers Institute will host an evening of piano music honoring the legacy of Fred and Joanne Rogers (7:30-8:30 p.m. June 3 at the Fred Rogers Center in Latrobe). Pianists Gloria Cook and Cynthia Lawing — of the Rogers’ alma mater, Rollins College — will perform on pianos owned by Fred and Joanne Rogers.
The program kicks off with an arrangement of “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” by Daniel Crozier, Fred’s nephew. The event is free to attend, but registration is required at fredrogersinstitute.org/sounds-of-the-neighborhood and semi-formal attire is encouraged.
Kept/canceled/spun off
Netflix renewed Dan Levy’s comedic thriller “Big Mistakes” for a second season, “Running Point” for a third and “My Life with the Walter Boys” for a fourth season.
Apple TV renewed “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” for a second season.
Magnolia will bring back the living history series “Back to the Frontier” for a second season in 2027.
Netflix renewed “The Lincoln Lawyer” for a fifth and final season.
Hulu will bring back “Am I Being Unreasonable?” for a third and final season.
BET’s “The Oval” will end with its seventh season, which debuted this week.
ABC ordered a new “Grey’s Anatomy” spin-off for 2027 set in a rural west Texas medical center.
A movie based on Adult Swim’s “Rick and Morty” is in development at Warner Bros.
Channel surfing
The NFL will expand its games on Netflix in the fall. In addition to Christmas Day games, Netflix will have games from Australia (Sept. 10), a Thanksgiving Eve game (Nov. 25) and a Week 18 game (1 p.m. Jan. 9). So far, the Steelers don’t have a Netflix game (weeks 16 and 18 are TBD), but the Steelers do have two games on Amazon’s Prime Video (Oct. 1, Nov. 27) and one on NFL Network (Oct. 25). Those games will also air on a local channel. … The Roman Catholic Diocese of Greensburg’s “The Catholic Accent” will celebrate the diocese’s “75 years of community and faith” in an episode airing at 11:30 a.m. May 31 and June 7 on WPXI-TV and at TheAccentOnline.org. … Telecasts of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show will relocate from Fox Sports to Netflix in 2027 as part of a new TV deal. … Reruns of “Doctor Who” (2005-22) will stream on AMC beginning June 11. … Season 14 of “Futurama” streams on Hulu on Aug. 3. … Netflix’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” returns with seven episodes Aug. 5 and a grand finale episode Aug. 26. … “South Park” will be back for its six- episode 29th season Sept. 16 on Comedy Central with new episodes debuting in the 10 p.m. Wednesday time period every other week.