I still can’t imagine a world in which The Burrows doesn’t get another season. I mean, what is going on at Netflix? Why was this show canceled so quickly? How do you land a science fiction series starring Alfred Molina, Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard, Clark Peters, Denis O’Hare, and Bill Pullman and not have audiences flock to it? If I were running Netflix, I’d chalk it up to some strange anomaly and keep promoting The Burrows, figuring maybe May just wasn’t the right month for its premiere. The funniest part is that the animated Stranger Things series got picked up for a second season, and I have yet to find anyone who thinks it’s anywhere near as good as the live action show. I guess Netflix has its priorities, and The Burrows just isn’t one of them. That’s a shame because I had an absolute blast with this first season. It’s one of the strongest debut seasons of any television show I’ve seen in quite a while.

Sometimes I miss the old way we watched television. I like having an episode a week to think about instead of being handed eight or ten hours and feeling like the streaming service expects me to inhale the whole thing over a weekend. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy From on MGM+, where every episode has time to breathe before the next one arrives. That’s how I was watching The Burrows. I was savoring it. I was recommending it to people, but I hadn’t actually finished it yet because I assumed I had time. Then, barely a month after it premiered, Netflix canceled it. I honestly didn’t think they’d move that fast, especially with a show that still seemed to be finding an audience.

The rumor mill suggested Netflix had actually been discussing picking up The Burrows for both a second and third season and shooting them back to back. That’s a pretty dramatic shift from potentially committing to two more seasons to suddenly committing to none. The cast was reportedly in negotiations until they weren’t. It’s almost like somebody at Netflix got body-snatched and replaced by someone who absolutely hated the show. Television has always worked that way to some degree. Executives change, new leadership comes in, and suddenly projects championed by the previous regime become easy targets. Maybe someone arrived in development, looked at The Burrows, didn’t understand what it was trying to do, and decided it was the first thing to go.

That might sound cynical, but we’ve heard stories like this before. Sarah Michelle Gellar has spoken about the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot, saying there was an executive who repeatedly admitted he didn’t understand the appeal of Buffy, making her feel like the project was doomed before it ever had a fair chance. Hollywood can be a strange place where millions of dollars are spent creating something only for it to be discarded because the people making decisions change. Just look at Batgirl, a completed film that Warner Bros. ultimately shelved as a tax write-off. Countless talented people devoted months of their lives to that project, and audiences will likely never see the finished result. The Burrows isn’t quite that extreme, but it still leaves viewers with the same lingering frustration. We’ll never know what the writers had planned for the second and third seasons, how the larger mystery would have unfolded, or how everything was supposed to connect. The first season ends with plenty of unanswered questions because the creative team understandably believed they had a legitimate shot at continuing the story. Why wouldn’t they? When you assemble a cast featuring Alfred Molina, Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard, Clark Peters, Denis O’Hare, and Bill Pullman, you’re clearly aiming for something a little different than the average streaming release.

The Burrows centers on a retirement community that is largely separated from the outside world. Living in Central Florida, I immediately understood the concept because we have something remarkably similar in The Villages, a massive age-restricted community that essentially functions as its own town. It has its own services, its own identity, and its own rhythm, despite existing alongside the surrounding counties. Because I’d already seen that kind of environment firsthand, I had no trouble buying into the premise. Alfred Molina plays a widower who reluctantly moves into The Burrows after the death of his wife. They had planned to retire there together, and with the house already purchased and the contract impossible to escape, he decides he might as well go through with it. His daughter supports the move, believing it’ll be good for him, but he’s convinced he doesn’t belong. That outsider perspective makes him the perfect audience surrogate.

Molina’s character initially keeps to himself until his relentlessly friendly neighbor, played by Bill Pullman, starts pulling him into the community. Pullman insists there’s more to The Burrows than meets the eye. He’s right, although not in the way he thinks. Along the way, Molina becomes part of a memorable ensemble that includes a married couple played by Alfre Woodard and Clark Peters, Geena Davis as an independent resident who quickly becomes one of the group’s most entertaining members, and Denis O’Hare as a retired physician. Each brings a distinct personality to the table, and watching this unlikely collection of retirees slowly bond is one of the show’s greatest strengths. There’s also a younger security guard who initially seems destined to be a minor supporting character before gradually becoming part of the group, largely through his growing relationship with Geena Davis’s character. He’s never treated as someone there to make the older cast seem outdated. Instead, he becomes an honorary member of the team, respecting their experience while helping them uncover the increasingly bizarre truth surrounding the community.

As for what The Burrows actually is, that’s where I have to be careful. I don’t want to spoil the central mystery because discovering it is half the fun. Let’s just say things definitely go bump in the night. I’d describe it as a creature feature with a mystery at its core, and it feels very much like Stranger Things for an older audience. That’s fitting since the Duffer Brothers serve as executive producers. If Stranger Things revolves around a cast of kids stumbling into the unknown, The Burrows flips the formula by focusing almost entirely on retirees. There are very few younger characters, and that’s exactly what makes it refreshing. Within the opening minutes, the show tips its hand enough for you to understand what kind of ride you’re in for. Like many horror stories, it opens with a sequence designed to establish the tone immediately. It’s creepy without becoming excessively graphic. There are certainly moments that push boundaries, but honestly, Stranger Things has probably gone even further. The real hook isn’t the violence anyway. It’s the mystery of what’s happening inside The Burrows and why the people running the community seem so determined to keep certain secrets buried.

The audio description is exceptional because it has to sell the creature feature aspects of the series. I believe Jabari Gray narrated it, though I could be mistaken. Either way, this is exactly the kind of science fiction series that benefits tremendously from audio description. Fantasy and science fiction often require describers to explain things that simply don’t exist in the real world. If you watched The Burrows without it, you’d miss out on crucial details about the creatures themselves, what they look like, how large they are, how they’re moving, and just how intimidating they’re meant to be. It also adds a great deal to the suspenseful moments, where the danger isn’t always coming from the creatures themselves. Since the show has light horror elements woven throughout, those visual details become an important part of the experience.

The performances are excellent across the board, but if I had to single out one actor, it would be Geena Davis. I absolutely loved her here. She proves she’s still an incredibly commanding screen presence, and it’s remarkable that, at 70 years old, she still carries herself like someone fully capable of kicking some ass. I also appreciated that the series gave her a younger love interest, something we don’t see nearly often enough on television. Alfred Molina is exactly as dependable as you’d expect, effortlessly settling into the role of the intellectual who slowly pieces together what’s happening. Alfre Woodard is terrific as a former police officer, while Clark Peters brings an easygoing charm to his role, much of it tied to his rather enthusiastic recreational habits. Denis O’Hare is perfectly cast as the group’s lone gay member, a retired doctor whose memories of treating patients during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic come rushing back as events inside The Burrows force him to confront difficult ethical decisions once again. And while I can’t really explain why without wandering into spoiler territory, Bill Pullman doesn’t actually have a tremendous amount of screen time. What surprised me was just how much impact he makes with the scenes he does have.

I’m honestly surprised The Burrows didn’t receive any Emmy nominations. Then again, it’s entirely possible Netflix simply chose not to campaign for it. If that happened, the actors would’ve needed to self-submit, and perhaps that just wasn’t something anyone wanted to pursue. I genuinely think Bill Pullman had a legitimate shot in the Guest Actor category, while Geena Davis would’ve made a strong Supporting Actress contender. Awards eligibility can also be surprisingly complicated. I’ve seen people wonder why Heated Rivalry didn’t receive Emmy nominations, when the answer is simply that it wasn’t eligible as a Canadian production. The Burrows didn’t have that problem. It had one opportunity, and I can’t help wondering if Netflix had little interest in seeing a canceled series suddenly become an Emmy success story. Imagine how awkward it would’ve looked if The Burrows had started racking up nominations after the company had already pulled the plug. Whether that’s what happened or not, it certainly is suspicious since this show was well positioned for even below the line nominations in the craft categories, and walked with zero nominations.

Fight back. If you love a show, and it got cancelled, watch it anyway. Show Netflix they miscalculated. Even if it doesn’t save your show this time, it could always help another, and give them pause. The Boroughs is more than worthy of the less than 8 hours it takes to finish, and since you don’t have to rush to get the show its renewal, you can watch at your own pace, something we used to be able to do a lot more of. Something is not right at The Boroughs, and it isn’t the danger around every corner, it is that Netflix failed to see the potential and choose to realize it.

Fresh: 8.9/10