NetflixWhen Netflix announced The Boroughs, a new sci-fi adventure series about a group of friends who take down a strange creature terrorizing their community, plenty of people had the same thought: it’s just Stranger Things but in a retirement community. It’s easy to see why, as there’s that unmistakable Stephen King tone, a bunch of 1980s needle drops, and, most obviously, Stranger Things creators The Duffer Brothers as producers. There was even a theory that the characters in The Boroughs were actually the Stranger Things kids all grown up. Showrunners Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews are very aware of the comparison. “We both wanted to tell coming-of-age stories,” Addiss tells Inverse. “We just picked a different age, but it's all still unlikely heroes. If a group of kids comes to somebody and says, ‘I saw a monster,’ they're not going to be believed. If a group of older folks comes and says they saw a monster, they're not going to be believed.” One thing you can believe? The Boroughs is the best sci-fi thriller series of the year so far, and it’s impossible not to fall in love with its characters and gripping sci-fi mystery. The Boroughs follows grumpy widower Sam Cooper (Alfred Molina), who is encouraged by his daughter (Jena Malone) to build a new life in The Boroughs, an idyllic retirement community that has given people “the time of your life” for 75 years. Sam is slowly welcomed by his neighbors, especially Jack (Bill Pullman), Renee (Geena Davis), Wally (Denis O’Hare), Judy (Alfre Woodard), and her husband Art (Clarke Peters.) But when one of their own is murdered in the middle of the night, it’s left to the rest of them to investigate the dark threat that’s invading where they’re spending their Golden Years. The Boroughs is the perfect setting for a story like this, blending typical images, like an art class or a pickleball match, with dark dystopian imagery like “The Manor,” the pastel-colored memory care facility that operates more like a prison. Showrunners Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews did intense research into communities like these, replicating all the strange little nuances you may not consider. “Everything is curved, there’s no 90 degree angles,” Matthews tells Inverse. “There was something about driving in it that became the shape of The Boroughs, this idea of a circle and a bubble,” Addiss says. But a rich world is only as interesting as the characters who live in it, and this show’s eclectic group of seniors is enough to make the Golden Girls look bland. Besides grieving engineer Sam, Wally is coping with a cancer diagnosis, Art hides out in the desert and grows magic mushrooms with his pet crow Brooksy, Judy is hiding a dark secret from her husband, while Renee eschews the typical golf cart for a sleek red convertible. The Boroughs follows a group of friends in a retirement community who discover a dark secret fueling the entire place. | Netflix Renee’s car is actually a perfect example of what The Boroughs does well: when Renee and her love interest, Paz (Carlos Miranda) try to take down evil security guard Ernest, they end up in her red convertible, set up to be launched off a cliff. If that sounds familiar, it’s eerily similar to the ending of Thelma and Louise, which starred Geena Davis. “I heard that I was going to have a car instead of a golf cart, and I was like, ‘Cool. Yeah, I love that,’” Davis tells Inverse. “And then I heard it was a convertible, and I started to go, ‘Hmm.’ It wasn't green, thankfully!” Those kinds of meta moments are all over this show, from the idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark (Alfred Molina’s first movie) to a resident in The Manor reading Salem’s Lot. This is a series that is incredibly literate in the genre it’s set in, and hits each beat perfectly. From subplots about Art discovering a strange tree in the desert to Sam rigging up a device using old CRT TVs, it has all the charm of a 1980s Amblin adventure film and a lead cast who actually remember those. The Boroughs’ creatures are just the perfect amount of creepy. | NetflixThe mysterious threat to The Boroughs is equally as nostalgic, evoking E.T. (but not nearly as friendly), and the origin story is thematically perfect. In case that’s not enough to convince you this is a hard-core sci-fi show, rest assured that said origin story revolves around copious amounts of different-colored goo and a magic fruit.Usually, being compared to Stranger Things would be a high honor, but honestly, that comparison understates the true innovation of this series.“Stranger Things was dealing with very serious, deeply worrying threads and themes about murder and torture and all that sort of thing,” Alfred Molina tells Inverse. “This is, I think, much more on a human basis. It's about people reacting to extraordinary circumstances.” That’s what all the best stories are, in the end. It doesn’t matter if they’re teens in Indiana or seniors in New Mexico; it’s fascinating to see humans deal with extraordinary circumstances, especially if it involves creatures who aren’t quite human. The Boroughs is now streaming on Netflix.