Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Jen Maravegias | TV | May 22, 2026
You have two choices for your Alfred Molina viewing pleasure on Netflix right now. You can listen to him voice a sad, dying octopus in Remarkably Bright Creatures. A movie so maudlin and schmaltzy that even my mother couldn’t finish watching it. Or, you can watch him play a curmudgeonly widower trapped in a retirement community where a monster is preying on the residents in The Boroughs.
Both are a memento mori. A reminder that we all must die, and a reminder that we all must live our lives to the fullest until we do. But The Boroughs is more fun. It has a much better script and a stronger cast (with all due respect to Sally Field), who deftly deliver acerbic wit and convey the deep sadness of personal loss in the show’s eight episodes.
Molina, mourning the sudden loss of his wife (Jane Kaczmarek), is contractually obligated to move into The Boroughs, a retirement and hospice community his wife picked out for them before her death. He absolutely does not want to be there, but he also doesn’t want to be a burden to his daughter (Jena Malone) and her family.
When Molina is attacked by the previous resident of his house (Ed Begley Jr.), who is spouting nonsense about owls living in the walls, he thinks he’s found his way out of his contract. They’ll let him leave if he doesn’t sue them. But his neighbor (Bill Pullman) draws him into the fold, convincing him to stay by introducing him to his own quirky circle of friends.
Geena Davis is perfectly cast as the vivacious, flirty “cougar.” Denis O’Hare is the community’s hedonist and resident troublemaker. Alfre Woodard, the retired reporter from Chicago, is married to Clark Peters (Treme, The Wire, Da 5 Bloods) who just wants to left alone to eat cheese and smoke weed (relatable).
They wind up teaming up with the new, young security guard (Station 19’s Carlos Miranda), who has the hots for Geena Davis (cause she’s still got it), to fight back against the evil plot they accidentally uncover. The Boroughs only exists as a feeding ground for a small group of people who discovered a creature that can synthesize cerebrospinal fluid into an elixir that provides eternal life.
They’ve kept the creature and her offspring trapped for decades. But she has learned how to communicate telepathically with the community’s dementia/Alzheimer’s patients. And she’s able to reach out to Alfred Molina’s character because the sorrow of his wife’s passing has created a rift in his mind where she can access images of her to ask for his help.
The Boroughs was written in part and created by Jeffrey Addiss & Will Matthews who worked together on The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. But The Duffer Brothers’ Upside Down Pictures is all over this project as one of the producing partners. Their love of all things 1980s is very present. There are moments obviously influenced by Close Encounters, E.T., and Cocoon. The main idea of The Boroughs also owes at least a little to Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce. It’s a bit of a stretch to compare it to Carpenter’s The Thing. But replace the isolated, barren Arctic research station with a barren, isolated desert retirement community, and the creature (“it has too many legs”) lurking in the shadows feeding off the unsuspecting residents feels familiar. They even cast Dee Wallace, the quintessential ’80s SciFi mom, in the sacrificial Drew Barrymore role. Much like Stranger Things, it’s an ’80s love-fest, but with a softer, more lighthearted Boomer bent to it. The stakes are lower. That doesn’t make it less exciting. It does make it less anxiety-inducing, though.
Unlike Stranger Things, where the monsters needed to be destroyed to save the world, the monsters here are not what they seem. They’re the ones who need saving in The Boroughs. Molina and his crew are forced to choose between their anger over the loss of their friends and forgiving the creatures who had no choice in what they were doing. In the showdown between the old folks and those who are preying on them to maintain eternal life, Molina, Davis, Woodard, and Peters prove they can still pack a punch, despite their age.
That idea of “despite their age” is a major premise of The Boroughs. Cathode ray tubes in outdated TV sets are repurposed into effective weapons. The most vulnerable folks in the community are conduits of communication for the captive creatures. In Stranger Things, everyone seemed too young to be running around saving the world. In The Boroughs, the characters show off the battle scars of aging (hip replacements, heart surgery) to remind us, and themselves, that they might be too old for monster hunting. The fact that this cast of actors has been aged out of leading roles in Hollywood but is still an absolute pleasure to watch further proves the point.
If you’re looking for serious science fiction or monster movie action, The Boroughs isn’t it. If you’re in the mood for a poignant but fun romp through some of our favorite monster movie tropes by some of our generation’s most respected and talented actors, The Boroughs is for you.
All eight episodes of The Boroughs are now streaming on Netflix.
