The Boroughs

Netflix

The ranking order on the Netflix top 10 list has finally changed, and its new #1 series is one of the best new shows that the service has seen in a while.

Nemesis has been knocked down to #3 after a long while on top, and we still haven’t heard anything about season 2 renewal. It has now been replaced by The Boroughs, the new series produced by the ex-Stranger Things pair, Matt and Ross Duffer. It’s another story about a band of friends trying to take on corporate and monstrous threats, though this time, a bunch of retirees, rather than kids and teens. And it’s quite good.

As it stands, The Boroughs boasts a 95% Rotten Tomatoes score from well over three dozen critics, cementing it as higher than the overall score of Stranger Things itself. It also has a solid 80% audience score, though not too many reviews are in on that front yet. Here’s the official synopsis:

“In a seemingly picturesque retirement community, a group of unlikely heroes must band together to stop an otherworldly threat from stealing the one thing they don't have, time.”

My own take on the series is that I do think it’s quite charming, but if you’re looking for an elaborate mystery, and are at all familiar with the genre, the big reveals in the show are fairly easy to guess, some of them from the first episode alone, especially if you read that synopsis. How the monster angle is handled is an interesting twist, however.

I am curious what happens to the show after this, as it is not pitched as a limited series, and with this kind of performance, it seems like it might be able to sail toward a second season. The creators of the show, Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, have previously said they have a three-season plan for the series, and I wonder if that could expand on the current monsters we see, or move the group into new territory. This could have been wrapped up in one season, given how it ends, but that may not be the plan. Netflix is obviously looking for a new series to replace Stranger Things, and while no, it won’t come anywhere close to those numbers, the reviews are good, the cast is great, and it’s currently performing quite well. So I’d say all of that is working in its favor, at least from the metrics we can see (many others, like how many people make it to the end of the series, are even more important).

I do recommend you check out The Boroughs, though if you’re looking for this to be on par with the best seasons of Stranger Things, it’s not going to be that.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.