If an idyllic subdivision shows up onscreen, we all know the drill: There’s a skeleton in the closet, a meth lab in the basement, a noose in the attic, a body beneath the azaleas, a crack in the wainscoting, a lie in the marriage, little fires everywhere. So give the baby his bottle and bust out those binoculars, because the bland heart of upper-middle-class America is actually a festering pit of half-buried secrets.
It’s a trope that’s been exhaustively explored in 75 years’ worth of media, from The Stepford Wives to The Ice Storm to WandaVision, from Revolutionary Road to Elm Street to Wisteria Lane. So it’s difficult to say anything about the suburbs that feels actually new: If nothing is ever as it seems, everything eventually starts to seem like nothing.
That’s the prevailing feeling of The ’Burbs, Peacock’s dark comedy about the denizens of a quirky upstate cul-de-sac. Based on Joe Dante and Dana Olsen’s 1989 flick of the same name, the series spreads its margarine-thin plot across eight episodes, leading to a less-than-satisfying conclusion. It’s like watching a neighbor mow the same patch of lawn all day long, when the grass was already plenty short. There’s still entertainment to be found thanks to a winning cast and quippy dialogue from creator Celeste Hughey (High Fidelity, Dead To Me) and her team. But it isn’t enough to disguise the fact that there just isn’t much there there.
The show swaps longtime suburbanite Ray (Tom Hanks in the original film) for new mom Samira Fisher (Keke Palmer), who’s just moved from the big city to the childhood house of her husband, Rob (Jack Whitehall). In an attempt to stave off the boredom of life on maternity leave, Samira becomes obsessed with the abandoned Victorian across the street where a murder supposedly took place 20 years ago. Her fixation only grows when a mysterious stranger named Gary (Weeds alum Justin Kirk) moves in with axes, shovels, and a bad attitude in tow.
Samira quickly draws her oddball neighbors into the mystery: wine-swilling widow Lynn (Palm Royale’s Julia Duffy); Dana (the always-welcome Paula Pell), a retired member of the military whose wife is away on duty; and Tod (What We Do In The Shadows’ Mark Proksch), a dyed-in-the-wool weirdo who seems to know everybody’s business. Meanwhile, Rob and his BFF Naveen (Kapil Talwalkar) seem to be harboring a dark secret about the supposed murder victim.
The first half of the season spins its wheels like no one’s business. The elements of the mystery are pretty basic yet we hear them repeated endlessly, making the tension go completely slack as Samira and her cronies gossip over glasses of wine on Lynn’s porch and while Rob and Naveen occasionally interrupt their jovial banter to throw each other sinister glances. Things pick up when we finally start getting some answers, but odds are you’ll have bowed out around the twentieth time Samira provokes Gary or Lynn grumbles about the fact that the spaniel of the HOA president (played by Danielle Kennedy) won’t stop taking dumps on her front lawn. Ultimately, The ’Burbs proves to be derivative of greats that have gone before it—and judging by the fact that the characters directly reference Rear Window and Get Out, the show knows it.
Still, the ensemble’s effortless charm is enough to keep you watching. Palmer carries the series on sheer charisma alone, buoyed by her easy chemistry with Whitehall. You can see why these two got together—and why they’re hanging on despite the secrets lingering between them. But the show’s real weapon is Pell, who brings the same killer one-liner energy to the series as she brought to Girls5eva. It’s especially fun when she’s bouncing off the deadpan brilliance of Proksch. Tod might not be an energy vampire, but he knows how to mutter a confession so weird that it stops any conversation dead in its tracks. And though he’s only in a few scenes, RJ Cyler is a breath of fresh city air as Samira’s younger brother, Langston.
If nothing else, The ’Burbs is a strong argument for not dragging out a story for the sake of a typical streaming season length. The plot could’ve crackled if it was told in half the time. Frustratingly, the mystery isn’t even fully solved by the end of the season—though the answer seems pretty obvious. If The ’Burbs does return, here’s hoping it can pull itself out of the cul-de-sac.
Jenna Scherer is a contributor to The A.V. Club. The ‘Burbs premieres February 8 on Peacock.