You just don’t know what’s happening behind the doors of those cute little houses with the perfectly manicured lawns. This is the guiding principle of TV and movies about the suburbs, and has been since well before “The ’Burbs” came out in 1989. Joe Dante’s horror comedy, starring Tom Hanks a few years before he started winning Oscars, was a thin movie with a tasty premise: What if the family that just moved in next door belonged to a satanic cult? And what if the whole neighborhood made a collective fool of itself trying to prove it?
The new TV version of “The ’Burbs” follows the general template, but it’s more biting and less cartoonish. The lazy-of-mind might call it “woke,” a word that has ceased to mean much of anything. Its social consciousness works in the service of satire, and it does that form proud without standing on a soapbox. It has a tone and it sticks to it, a virtue that sounds simple enough but eludes so many shows that don’t know what they want to be.
The series, which premieres Sunday night on Peacock, succeeds largely by focusing on a circle of suburban misfits more witty and appealing than their big-screen counterparts. Their leader is Samira (Keke Palmer, also an executive producer), a Black woman newly arrived to homogenous Hinkley Hills with her white husband (Jack Whitehall) and their newborn. Samira has reservations about her new community; her wordless reaction is priceless when a local librarian refers to her mixed-race baby as a “cute little mocha munchkin.” But the weather is nice, the crime rate is low, and the house where her husband grew up sure is cozy.
But then there’s that big, creepy Victorian across the street, where, rumor has it, a teenage girl was once murdered. The new owner (Justin Kirk) is an enigmatic recluse who seems to be keeping something (or someone?) in the basement. And Samira’s own husband, who comes across as a mild-mannered Brit, has got some secrets of his own. Actually, just about everyone here does.
The plot doesn’t matter nearly as much as the vibe and the characters, most of whom are outsiders in one way or another. Samira is the clearest example, an oddity in Hinkley Hills by virtue of her skin color. Her hubby, Rob, moved to Hinkley Hills from England as a child; his old friend Naveen (Kapil Talwalkar) received his fair share of abuse growing up there as an Indian American. The writers of “The ’Burbs,” including series creator Celeste Hughey, prove they’re well-versed in the subtleties of microaggression.
If all of this makes “The ’Burbs” sound like a social treatise, have no fear (except the kind you’re supposed to have). The series is also charmingly goofy. Samira’s other neighbors include Dana, a gregarious lesbian Marine veteran (played by the former “Saturday Night Live” writer Paula Pell); Lynn, a nosy widow (Julia Duffy, from “Newhart” and “Designing Women”); and Tod, an eccentric introvert (Mark Proksch, best known as the “energy vampire” Colin from “What We Do in the Shadows”). This foursome snoops and pries and speculates; “The ’Burbs” brings a little “Only Murders in the Building” energy, mixed with a touch of “Scooby-Doo.” Meanwhile, Kirk, who played presidential hopeful Jeryd Mencken on “Succession,” underplays their potential prey with a raised eyebrow and unneighborly side-eye. Maybe he’s just a snooty misanthrope, or a sneaky silver fox.
“The ‘Burbs” has fun with shots and sequences that serve as visual quotes of movies about the ‘burbs. One episode begins with an image of green lawns and the sound of a sprinkler firing up to do its work, and you could swear you’re back in the world of David Lynch’s 1986 classic, “Blue Velvet.” By now suburban stories practically constitute their own subgenre of social critique, from the decay, conformity, and alcoholism of “The Swimmer” (John Cheever’s 1964 short story and the 1968 movie adaptation with Burt Lancaster) to the “Stepford Wives”-like marital submission of “Don’t Worry Darling” (set in the ’50s, released in 2022). One of my favorite recent entries, the 2025 Apple TV series “Government Cheese,” applies an absurdist approach to the story of a Black family in late-’60s San Fernando Valley.
“The ’Burbs” serves some vinegar to go with its honey, but it rarely strays far from fun. One scene catches Samira in the middle of explaining the Kendrick Lamar/Drake hip-hop feud to her infant son, a topic that probably doesn’t get a lot of mileage in Hinkley Hills. But the primary mode is the comedy of paranoia, of being so bored out of your skull that you convince yourself something horrible must be happening down the street. Malvina Reynolds long ago sang of “Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same.” “The ‘Burbs” shakes those boxes up for the current age, filling them not with sanctimony but good, pointed humor.
THE ’BURBS
Created by Celeste Hughey. Starring Keke Palmer, Jack Whitehall, Julia Duffy, Paula Pell, Mark Proksch, Justin Kirk, Kapil Talwalkar, Danielle Kennedy, and Caroline Day. Premieres Feb. 8 on Peacock.
Chris Vognar can be reached at chris.vognar@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram at @chrisvognar and on Bluesky at chrisvognar.bsky.social.