From Newsgroup: rec.arts.tv



'The Boroughs' Review: 'Stranger Things,' the Senior Edition
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In a new Netflix series from the Duffer brothers' production
company, the people battling the monsters don't move as fast
as they used to.

What do you get when you take a lovable ensemble of
septuagenarian actors and cross them with the Duffer
brothers? You get a direct glimpse of the Netflix genetic
code.

"The Boroughs," premiering on Thursday, is an innocuously
pleasant hybrid of uplifting senior-citizen adventure and
scary-monster horror show. But its defining characteristic is
the Netflixian state of variable attention and lowered
expectation that it induces in the viewer across its eight
episodes.

Like Netflix's "A Man on the Inside," with Ted Danson, or
Hulu's "Only Murders in the Building," with Steve Martin and
Martin Short, "The Boroughs" exploits the comic and
sentimental possibilities of putting older baby boomers into
action, and jeopardy, as crotchety sleuths. But it does that
in bulk.

Of the eight primary performers playing residents of the
sinister retirement community called the Boroughs, seven -
Ed Begley Jr., Geena Davis, Alfred Molina, Clarke Peters, Bill
Pullman, Dee Wallace and Alfre Woodard - are in their 70s, and
the baby of the group, Denis O'Hare, is 64. Other 70-somethings
in the cast include Jane Kaczmarek, Mary McDonnell and Anna
Deavere Smith.

This ensemble of a certain age - and it is a decidedly
accomplished and appealing group - engages in the
audience-pleasing slapstick and patter we expect in geriatric
dramedies. But it gets a more strenuous workout than usual
because "The Boroughs" is a result of the production deal that
Matt and Ross Duffer signed with Netflix after the success of
"Stranger Things." (They have since moved to Paramount.)

The series was created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, who
collaborated previously on animated "Lord of the Rings" and
"Dark Crystal" projects. But the fingerprints of "Stranger
Things" are all over "The Boroughs." There are monsters in the
retirement village, and they and their habitats are distant,
lower-budgeted echoes of the earlier show's creatures and their
shadow realm, the Upside Down.

As Sam, the grieving, angry widower played by Molina, rallies
the geezers to do battle, the harmony between the two shows is
ever more apparent. The Duffers prioritized Spielbergian
nostalgia in "Stranger Things" by setting the show in the 1980s;
"The Boroughs" is set in the present, but its characters' tastes
and hobbies put us in a 1970s and '80s pop-culture echo chamber.

"The Golden Girls" is on the TV, Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen
are on the stereo, and everyone knows about the Hair Club for
Men. Sam, a former engineer, collects vintage TV sets, which come
in handy when it turns out cathode rays can be weaponized against
the monsters. Springsteen's "Thunder Road" figures in the plot,
and one of the more moving scenes involves the former radical
played by Peters singing Bill Withers's "Lovely Day."

Another thing "The Boroughs" and "Stranger Things" have in common,
unfortunately, is a tinny earnestness in their writing, which they
try to make up for with so-so jokes and frenetic action. It was a
problem that grew more irritating as "Stranger Things" grew more
bloated and self-important.

In "The Boroughs," it dampens the fun rather than killing it, but
there is still that Netflix bulk-goods feeling, as if the emphasis
were on getting product on the shelves. It helps that Addiss and
Matthews keep things pitched at a lower, more amiable key. And the
overall quality of the cast means that there are always people
coming along whom you're happy to watch, even if they're just
mugging or doing a funny walk. Or screaming. (I mentioned Dee
Wallace, right?)

The ordinariness of "The Boroughs" doesn't mean that there aren't
some time-tested horror-movie ideas kicking around in it - it's a
fairly amusing gloss on the notion that the people warehoused in
retirement communities are literally having the life sucked out of
them. And while the main characters fall into types like the aging
stud and the aging hippie, most of the performers find a little
extra personality around the edges.

If you're going to follow a ragtag group of old folks playing the
parts of teenagers on a quest, it helps to be in company this
congenial.



<https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/arts/television/the-boroughs-review-netflix.html>




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