With TV’s biggest night of the year just behind us, we take a look at a new crop of series embracing the medium for what it does best.
Variations of the phrase “10-hour movie” are synonymous with creators and actors seeking to prove that their project has more in common with cinema than television. No matter how many movie stars flock to the small screen or how much this material dominates the cultural conversation, there is a desire to quantify a TV show’s worth alongside the hallowed world of filmmaking. “Fuck you! No you’re not! Make a TV show. You’re in the entertainment business,” The Boys creator Eric Kripke succinctly put in response to this sentiment in 2022.
Streaming has blurred some lines, but what those “10-hour movie” creatives don’t realise is that the best shows tend to be the ones that embrace the form in which they are broadcast rather than aspire to cinematic box ticking. Take the critical acclaim and rapt audience attention that horror-comedy Widow’s Bay, crime thriller Furious, and YA drama Sterling Point have all earned this summer. This unlikely trio embrace their format and deliver a fresh take on well-established genres, illustrating a desire for original material in familiar settings.
Long gone are the days of US network or cable television dominating the conversation. Yet the impact of the pre-streaming era is evident, as Widow’s Bay, Furious, and Sterling Point all have roots in a traditional 20-plus-episode model. Katie Dippold has been working on Widow’s Bay for at least 15 years. The story of the cursed Massachusetts island community began as a spec script that led to Dippold's hiring by sitcom maestro Mike Schur as a staff writer on Parks and Recreation in 2009. Dippold would go on to write features including The Heat and Ghostbusters, but she never let go of the haunted town. Cut to this summer, when Widow’s Bay took Apple TV by storm, culminating in last night's record-breaking 14 Emmy wins. The weekly release strategy has been fruitful in building momentum: Each episode depicts a different monster or scare, culminating in a finale that answers enough questions while leaving viewers eager to return to this spooky destination.
Widow’s Bay might conjure images of Stephen King, The X-Files, Twin Peaks and The Twilight Zone; it might also remind you of Parks & Rec and The Office. Scenes oscillate between frights and laughs. Anyone who says this isn’t a comedy is being obtuse. The nods to obscure and popular horrors come thick and fast without ever having to forfeit originality or fall into pastiche or parody. The blend of episodic and serialised storytelling helps this world feel lived-in; as does the stacked cast of TV faves, with Matthew Rhys leading the ensemble as Mayor Tom Loftis. At no point does Dippold feel like she is hiding the TV narrative framework behind cute conceits, and while the writer is king in this medium, the collaboration with director Hiro Murai is integral in capturing a potent cocktail of terror, humour and heart.
Dippold is not alone in pairing her comedy background with another genre. Elizabeth Meriwether’s trajectory post-New Girl has mostly steered away from single-camera sitcoms. Still, the dialogue in The Dropout, Dying for Sex, and now Hulu’s Furious is not without laugh-out-loud moments, despite heavy subject matter like terminal cancer and sex trafficking.
Loosely based on the 1987 psychological thriller Black Widow, Meriwether takes the cat-and-mouse conceit of an FBI Agent tracking a female serial killer and shines a spotlight on how abusive cycles prevail. Crime dramas are a cornerstone of TV on both sides of the Atlantic, from long-running procedurals (Law and Order: Special Victims Unit is about to enter its twenty-eighth season) to more recent offerings like the Emmy-nominated Task and beloved Ludwig. Meriwether has said that dark British murder shows served as a palate cleanser at the end of a long day spent working in comedy writers' rooms; her knowledge of the genre is evident in how various threads connect in each episode. She also never loses sight of the humans in this story, including female serial killer Catherine (Lola Petticrew) and FBI agents Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) and Nora Washington (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), who are hot on Catherine’s heels – and uncovering corruption within the New York field office.
As with Widow’s Bay, the leads and supporting characters expertly navigate the challenging tonal shifts. Scoot McNairy’s NYPD homicide detective Danny Kelly is a hangdog romantic, a wisecracking cop (particularly opposite Steve Way’s Alden), and a deadpan investigator. Bernstine’s weary veteran agent self-medicates with tequila. However, just when you think Furious is about to head down a well-worn path of crime thriller clichés, Meriwether cleverly sidesteps that by not letting alcoholism define Nora’s entire personality. The same applies to the odd-couple pairing of Nora and Alice as mentor-mentee, with one-on-one interactions that add a prickly layer on top of another.
Spending eight episodes with Alice and Nora only makes you want more; the dilemma of streaming-era TV is whether a show was intended as a one-off before leading to disappointing follow-ups. While Meriwether has been sticking to the limited series in the years since New Girl, Furious has been renewed. The next obstacle is how long it will be before season two hits screens. Not everything takes multiple years to produce, as The Pitt and Slow Horses have set the bar for consistent streaming output. The Pitt is the closest HBO Max has to a network-style show, and the creative team (including writers who worked on ’90s and ’00s juggernauts like ER and The West Wing) illustrates the value of collaborators with long experience in the TV business.
Likewise, Prime Video’s YA drama Sterling Point has an executive-producer duo who immediately signal that we are in safe hands. Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage are best known for The OC and Gossip Girl, two of TV’s definitive teen titles. While the first season of The OC had a staggering 27 episodes (a figure that was high even for the era), Sterling Point has fewer than a third of that, clocking in at eight. Regardless, creator Megan Park (who got her Hollywood break acting on The Secret Life of the American Teenager) has crafted a world that has the mood of those classic titles, serving up adolescent shenanigans with a dash of parental strife.
Most of the action takes place on the titular island in Canada’s idyllic Lake Muskoka, blending summer holiday hangout vibes with life-alerting discoveries. Annie (Ella Rubin) is about to turn 18 when she learns a deep family secret that has her questioning everything for the first time. What follows is a mix of melodramatic revelations and grounded reactions that make this genre so appealing, evoking the vibe of shows like Gilmore Girls, Dawson’s Creek and The OC without feeling derivative or relying too much on millennial nostalgia. The Gen Z cast exudes charm, and will make you want to while away warm days with them as they navigate queer romance, love triangles, and new friendships.
Sterling Point is less scary than Widow’s Bay, and far less fraught than Furious, but each of these shows is not pretending to be something they aren’t, and viewers are responding accordingly. Maybe we want TV to feel like TV after all.
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