The Boroughs

The useful thing about putting a supernatural adventure in a retirement community is that the heroes need not be taught that life is fragile. The Boroughs is an enjoyable science-fiction series whose older cast deserves a more absorbing mystery. It gives its residents danger, silliness and a reason to depend on one another. For much of the time, the pleasure comes from watching people with lives behind them find that there is still something urgent to do.

Alfred Molina, as Sam Cooper, and Alfre Woodard, as Judy Daniels, give the series its strongest reason to persist. The loneliness and grief surrounding these characters deserve the attention that the creature plot keeps demanding. We were moved by the residents’ loneliness, particularly in the performances of Molina and Woodard. Their need to feel useful to one another makes the time spent on these people worthwhile before the mystery has supplied another question.

Denis O’Hare’s Wally Baker, Clarke Peters’s Art Daniels and Geena Davis’s Renee Joyce help make this a group worth spending time with. The humour works because the programme does not treat old age itself as sufficient reason to laugh. Writers including Will Matthews and Jeffrey Addiss let fears about death and questions about responsibility sit alongside the silliness. The residents’ responsibilities to the next generation matter alongside their immediate need to survive.

Michelle Lawler and Matthew Jensen’s cinematography and Ruth Ammon’s production design have a useful starting point in the retirement community, a place where residents might reasonably expect some peace. The setting makes the intrusion of danger unsettling before the creatures have to prove themselves. John Paesano supplies the music, though the strongest emotional pull comes from the performers and their characters’ fears. The creature effects are less persuasive, a drawback when the series devotes so much attention to the supernatural threat.

An editing team that includes Noëmi Preiswerk and Cindy Mollo has eight episodes to shape, and the balance is uneven. Too much time goes into the mystery when another stretch with the residents would do more for the programme. The threat grows complicated without becoming especially interesting, and the monster plot competes with the ensemble for attention. Those stretches drag because the series has already shown us how much more engaging its characters can be.

Against the standards of a group adventure, the choice of heroes is a welcome change, but it does not excuse familiar plotting. This kind of story needs discoveries that make us want to follow the group into the next danger, and The Boroughs cannot always provide them. Its warmth helps, as does its willingness to let ageing and grief occupy space normally given to another clue. We kept wishing it would have more confidence in those parts of the story.

There is still enough humour and affection here to recommend it to anyone fond of a companionable supernatural mystery. The reservations matter most if intricate plotting or frightening creatures are the chief attraction. Viewers drawn by Molina, Woodard and the chance to see older people doing something besides advising younger heroes have a better reason to begin. Try it for the company, and do not count on losing sleep.