Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay contains countless pleasures, and one of my favorite ones involves the delightfully bizarre way the comedy/horror TV show leverages media and television footage within the show throughout its first season.
There’s a moment early in the first episode, “Welcome to Widow’s Bay!”, that gave a read on the kind of show that we would be in for. Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys, terrific as ever) offhandedly flips through a calendar pinned to the wall, and the images associated with each month just get progressively weirder.
By the time he gets to September or so, we see an associated image of a gruesome-looking car crash. Something no calendar produced by sane people would ever in a zillion years put up for sale. But there it is, hanging on the wall of the local government building in Widow’s Bay.
This is the kind of show that we’re in for, it’s telling us: weird, dark, and funny as hell.
Which means it was dialed up in a lab for people like me.
In the second episode, “Lodging,” Loftis agrees to stay overnight at the local inn to prove to a group of locals that it’s not haunted. Spoiler alert: it’s super haunted.
While attempting to relax in his digs, he flips on the TV in his hotel room, called the Captain’s Quarters – which of course is reputedly the most haunted room in the place. We see an older man standing outside on the island, and the footage is super grainy (everything is grainy in and around Widow’s Bay – it’s all part of the charm).
Then the guy stops talking, and just stares. For a long time. Finally, he turns around and starts walking away from the camera. It’s deliciously jarring, creepy and funny in just the right kind of way. And then of course things get scarier from there.
I mention all of this because Apple TV has released a full hour of “ambience” from Widow’s Bay on its YouTube channel.
What we see is entirely closed-circuit footage from within the world of the show. For example, we see Loftis hanging out in the lounge at the inn – where the innkeeper spies on guests from afar to ensure that they self-report their taking drinks from the “courtesy bar.”
Then there’s lengthy stretches of Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) sitting outside at a picnic table, entranced by the book she’s reading, Your Turn: Out With the New. If you’ve seen “Beach Reads,” you know how much influence this little devilish “self-help book” has on Patricia ahead of Sunset Cocktails.
Speaking of Patricia and Sunset Cocktails, I’d be remiss if I didn’t alert you to the massive “Patricia’s Sunset Cocktails Playlist!” on Spotify, which is 811 songs and over 60 hours of listening material strong.
“Let’s Dance,” by David Bowie is included, which maps to an absolutely perfect moment in “Beach Reads” when Patricia’s cocktail punch helps take Sunset Cocktails up multiple notches, shall we say.
Most of the rest of the “ambience” on YouTube features slightly unsettling, quiet depictions of different parts of Widow’s Bay. It’s fun to just watch some boats jostling around in the harbor and hear slightly howling noises going on in the background.
At one point, I found myself going back in the video to see if I had just encountered a “ghost,” and it seems that maybe I did!
All of this investigation only makes me want to run the entire first season of Widow’s Bay back once again, and for sure I’m already craving Season 2.
Thankfully, Season 2 has officially been greenlit, Variety reports. And you have to love this deadpan comment from showrunner Katie Dippold: “Season two is about how everything is great on the island and there’s nothing to worry about.”