Wanna feel old? The Stranger Things kids are living in a retirement home now.
Not literally, but that’s the pitch of Netflix’s new series, The Boroughs, which hails from creators Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews and executive producers the Matt and Ross Duffer.
And true to the recently departed Netflix show’s legacy, The Boroughs is drawing some positive reviews for its sterling cast — which includes Alfred Molina, Alfre Woodard, Geena Davis, Denis O’Hare, Clarke Peters, and Bill Pullman — and some less enthusiastic reviews for its plotting. It currently holds a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 71 “generally favorable” rating on Metacritic.
Keep reading for a rundown of the latest reviews for Netflix’s The Boroughs.
The Good
The headline for The Boroughs reviews is that the series is being received with a generally positive reception from critics.
“Monsters, shootings, crows and a very special liquid all show up in The Boroughs. Yet offering additional clues surrounding the sci-fi element would mean giving away too much of the story’s intricacies,” writes Aramide Tinubu in Variety. “However, what is most compelling about the series is its characters and themes, which anchor the narrative. … Boasting a fantastic cast that brings this ensemble of intricate characters to life, The Boroughs turns a familiar genre on its head, allowing audiences to consider from a different vantage point the constraints of the human experience, what it means to be fearless and the finality of death. Fascinating and intense, with The Boroughs, viewers will indeed have the time of their lives.”
Of the elements of the show that seem to work the best, it’s predictably the all-star, retirement-age cast that is earning the highest praise, but there are also complimentary comparisons being made to Stranger Things.
“It is, obviously, a fine cast and any fears (deriving from the presence of the Duffer brothers, famed for Stranger Things, as producers) that some of the best actors in the business are about to be wasted on hokum are soon laid aside by an intelligent, witty script and a plot that nods to all the most entertaining monster tropes without being slavishly devoted to them,” writes Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. “There’s also an unexpected tenderness and wisdom underlying the whole, that befits the stage of life its characters are at. Creators Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews are relative newcomers as writers (they have The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance TV series and Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim under their belts). They channel the spirit of Spielberg as the Duffers did, though they manage to emulate not just his unerring instinct for storytelling but his emphasis on emotional truth.
The Mixed
And while the central cast is practically super-powered, the same can’t be said for the entire ensemble.
“Davis, Molina, O’Hare, Peters, and Woodard make the show a blast, particularly the terrific middle stretch of the eight-episode first season,” writes Saloni Gajjar for the A.V. Club. “Too bad about the rest of the ensemble, whose one-note performances are a drag on The Boroughs’ momentum and scares. With leads this strong, you’d expect supporting players who can make lines like ‘The Boroughs is a fortress, a citadel blazing in the dark’ sound spooky, not goofy and uninspiring.”
Much of the critiques about the show come down to its plotting, which can have the effect to distracting from the award-winning talent in its cast.
“Meanwhile, the mystery taking up so much of the show’s time runs out of steam well before the answers are revealed,” writes The Hollywood Reporter‘s Angie Han, who describes the show otherwise as “perfectly watchable.” “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.”
