The Duffer Brothers Handed Stranger Things to Retired People in The Boroughs and It Works

This underrated sci-fi drama has no business being this good

When I tell you I was not expecting to be this invested in a show about a group of retirees fighting supernatural creatures in a desert retirement community, I mean it.

The Boroughs has the Duffer Brothers’ names attached with a cast that reads like a greatest hits compilation of everyone’s favourite actors from the last four decades. Alfred Molina. Gina Davis. Alfre Woodard. Bill Pullman. Clark Peters. Dennis O’Hare. Richard E. Grant. I was in before the first episode finished its cold open.

The premise is deceptively simple. Sam Cooper, played by a wonderfully grumpy Alfred Molina, moves into a picturesque desert retirement community after losing his wife. He doesn’t want to be there. His daughter basically drags him. The place is pristine and isolated and surrounded by desert in a way that feels less charming and more quietly ominous. And then, one night, Sam sees something in the dark that changes everything.

What follows is eight episodes of elderly people banding together to investigate something deeply strange, being dismissed by literally everyone around them, and refusing to stop anyway.

TMJ Rating: 🍿🍿🍿🍿/5

What’s Going On in The Boroughs

The show operates on two levels simultaneously. On the surface, it’s a mystery adventure about uncovering what’s lurking beneath a retirement community. Underneath that, it’s a genuinely moving exploration of ageing, grief, purpose, and what it means to still be here.

The characters start out feeling discarded and forgotten, and the show uses that as both a plot device and an emotional engine. Nobody believes these people when they report what they’re seeing. The assumption is dementia. The show knows exactly how cruel that is and leans into it deliberately.

The desert setting does enormous amounts of work. This community, dropped in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing, is both gorgeous and quietly menacing. If something is happening inside and these people try to report it, who comes? The isolation is essentially the whole trap.

The Cast is The Whole Point

Every single one of them is in top form, and the writers clearly understood that the best thing they could do was build characters worthy of these actors.

Molina anchors everything. Sam is grieving, standoffish, and sharper than everyone around him gives him credit for. Watching him slowly and reluctantly open up is genuinely moving, and he does it with a quiet dignity that makes every small moment land.

Dennis O’Hare surprised me the most. His character starts as the witty, sarcastic one and then takes a turn I did not see coming. The moral conflict running through his arc is one of the show’s most interesting threads.

Alfre Woodard brings an intensity to every scene that raises everyone around her. Clark Peters is consistently stoned and consistently the wisest person in the room, and the show uses that dynamic brilliantly.

The Horror Elements

The first creature reveal is outstanding. The imagery is dark and specific and gets under you immediately.

The CGI throughout holds up well, which matters more than it sounds when the supernatural elements are this central to the story. There’s a Spielberg quality to how the show builds dread slowly before showing you anything directly, and it works every time.

The horror also carries thematic weight rather than existing purely for scares. These are people who are already being told their time is running out. Something literally hunting them for that time hits differently because of it.

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Where it Falls Short

The villains are the weakest part by a significant margin. They’re obvious, predictable, and the lore behind what’s actually happening beneath the community is barely developed.

The show gestures at a mythology and then pulls back right when it could have gone somewhere genuinely interesting. For a central threat across eight episodes, the antagonists needed far more depth.

There are also multiple scenes where characters sit down and explain exactly what’s happening in ways that treat the audience like they weren’t paying attention. Heavy exposition delivered on a porch while nothing else happens.

The Ending Plays it Too Safe

The show builds to something that could have been genuinely devastating and then walks it back.

Consequences that would have hit hard get reversed and the emotional impact the whole season was building towards gets softened at the worst possible moment. I understand the instinct, but it still frustrates me. A show this willing to explore mortality in its themes should have been braver with its story.

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Should You Watch It?

Funny, emotional, visually interesting, and anchored by a cast that makes every scene worth watching even when the writing lets them down.

The Boroughs is Scooby-Doo for adults who’ve been through things, and it’s one of the better Netflix originals in a while. Watch it.

Have you watched The Boroughs yet and is Alfred Molina criminally underrated or am I the only one who thinks this? Tell me in the comments.