Widow's Bay left the 78th Primetime Emmys on Sunday night with 14 awards, more than any comedy has won in a single year. Apple TV's horror comedy follows Tom Loftis, a mayor determined to turn a cursed island town off the New England coast into a tourist destination, and it did most of its damage at the Creative Arts ceremonies the weekend before. The six it added on the telecast were the ones that matter: comedy series, writing, directing and three acting awards.
The show is the work of Katie Dippold, who came up through Parks and Recreation and spent close to twenty years trying to get this idea made. That history shows in how sure-footed the season is. Widow's Bay plays its dread straight, with real jump scares and a town that genuinely seems to want its visitors gone, and lays deadpan civic comedy over the top of it. The Television Academy has rarely warmed to genre in the comedy race, so a haunted town beating the safer nominees is a real shift and not just a big number.
Matthew Rhys plays the mayor, and he had a night nobody has had before. He won lead actor in a comedy for Widow's Bay and, earlier in the evening, lead actor in a limited series for Netflix's The Beast in Me, making him the first performer to take two lead acting Emmys in the same year. Because he already had a drama win for The Americans, he is also the first to hold lead acting Emmys in all three fields. His Loftis is the engine of the show, an optimist whose refusal to read the room is both the joke and the horror.
The supporting awards went to Stephen Root and Kate O'Flynn, and Betty Gilpin took guest actress, so the ensemble was recognized almost top to bottom. Hiro Murai, whose direction gave the island its off-kilter calm, won directing, and Dippold won writing. Comedies that sweep like this are usually broad and warm. This one is neither, which is why the result is worth remembering.
Widow's Bay is a single season on Apple TV in the US, UK and Australia. It premiered in April and ran weekly to June, so it is the rare Emmy champion you can catch up on in a weekend, and the case for its record is made by the end of the first episode.
