'Widow's Bay' seemed to come from nowhere. But Stephen Root always knew it was special

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Set us as preferred Apple TV’s “Widow’s Bay” is filled with idiosyncratic characters who wear their charming small-town quirks on their sleeves.But for Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), the local personalities pale in comparison to the evils lurking beneath the cursed island’s surface.

Every few decades since its founding a dark and deadly cycle begins, terrorizing the local community, many of whom are unable to survive beyond the island’s borders.And unfortunately for Tom — but luckily for the show’s fans — those supernatural forces have been reawakened, just in time for the summer tourist season.But it’s not just the island’s evil nature that proves a foil to Tom’s ambitions to turn the town into a New England attraction that rivals Cape Cod or Martha’s Vineyard.

Local fisherman Wyck Crawford, played by a delightfully rascally Stephen Root, serves as Loftis’ human antagonist, warning the mayor of impending doom.Wyck may be the voice of reason, but that voice is off-putting and his demeanor gruff.

In the series’ tonal cocktail of comedy with horror — with both the jokes and the scares unrelenting — Root finds yet another scene-stealing role, one whose combination of silliness and seriousness allowed him to go to emotional depths as an actor, he says, for the first time in many years.“I’m more than thrilled that it’s become a kind of watercooler show,” says Root, who along with co-stars Rhys, Dale Dickey and Kate O’Flynn, received an Emmy nomination for his performance.(“Widow’s Bay” received 19 overall, including for comedy series, the most for a debut series this season.) Created by Katie Dippold, the genre-bending series launched on the streamer at the end of April and quickly found an audience largely through word of mouth.

But from the very beginning, Root knew the show ...