We have just hit June, but it seems that we’ve already found one of the best new shows of 2026. That would be Widow’s Bay, on, surprise, surprise, Apple TV, which has the highest batting average of good-to-great shows of any streaming service out there.
With a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score, Widow’s Bay lets star Matthew Rhys be hilarious for once after his years-long spy turn in The Americans or his recent murderer role The Beast in Me, Netflix’s biggest new show of the year. Widow’s Bay is also #1 on Apple’s top 10 list, currently.
Rhys plays Tom Loftis, the mayor of a small island community that’s trying to attract tourists. Unfortunately, the island is haunted and the week-to-week curse rolls out horror tropes from ghost hotels to cult sacrifices to most recently, slasher films. In addition to Rhys, the show has made Kate O’Flynn’s Patricia a huge standout, taking point in two of those aforementioned episodes, one of which doesn’t feature Rhys at all.
Critics and audiences aren’t the only ones who are loving Widow’s Bay. The show has just gotten an endorsement from horror director legend Guillermo del Toro, most recently of Frankenstein. Here’s what he tweeted:
“If I may – in my estimation – Widows Bay may very well be the best streaming series in a long time… and hands down one of the most mesmerizing acts of narrative prestidigitation in Horror.”
While I had to look up what prestidigitation means (“the art of performing magic tricks or illusions using nimble hands and quick fingers”), he’s certainly right. While there are more and more horror series hitting streaming over time, including many all-time greats like Mike Flanagan’s Netflix Hill House/Bly Manor/Midnight Mass trio, Widow’s Bay is near the top of the pile. (Hilariously, Widow’s Bay cast Midnight Mass’s Hamish Linklater to be the cultish leader of its remote island community, the exact type of role he had in the Netflix show).
Widow’s Bay is not based on a book, and was created by Katie Dippold. She previously wrote on Parks and Recreation, and wrote 2013’s The Heat with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. She’s also famous for one of the best tweets of all time:
While I may not be Guillermo del Toro, I cannot recommend the hilarious, often reasonably scary Widow’s Bay enough. Del Toro is right to classify it as one of the best shows of 2026, and looking at the grand scope of horror TV, he might be right about that larger pool as well. There are two episodes left, but you can catch up with the first eight on Apple TV right now.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
