The Boroughs has a marvelous cast of players, almost all over 60. I love it for that reason alone. It’s about a remote retirement village stuck out in the middle of the New Mexico desert where strange things happen in the night. (I’d like to say ‘stranger things’ happen in the night, because this is a Duffer Brothers production, but it doesn’t quite fit the sentence.)

The Boroughs begins with recently widowed Sam (Alfred Molina) moving into The Boroughs. He’s in a cul-de-sac that looks like it came out of Pluribus. His late wife Lilly (Jane Kaczmarek) picked the place. His daughter Claire (Jena Malone) and her family deliver him to his new home. Sam and Claire are both engineers, which is crucial to the plot.

Sam begins meeting his neighbors. He doesn’t want to meet them, but he can’t avoid them. Jack (Bill Pullman) is friendly and invites him over. The couple next door Judy (Alfre Woodard) and Art (Clarke Peters) seem nice enough. There’s a retired doctor named Wally (Denis O’Hare) in the cul-de-sac. The final neighbor is Renee (Geena Davis), who drives around in a convertible like her name should have been Thelma.

Although this series is full of creepy creatures and bizarre events, it’s actually a character driven story. We get to know our players well as the story unfolds. Knowing the characters isn’t the only part of it. Thematically, an individual’s character (in the moral sense) plays a big part in how this series turns out.

The man who owned Sam’s house before him, Edward (Ed Begley Jr.) is now in the memory care section of the village. There’s no getting out the door of that place once you’re in it. He keeps talking about monsters and things in the walls. When Sam goes to visit him, he insists that owls are in the walls and the key is in the light.

Adding to the turmoil of having a new guy in the cul-de-sac, Jack dies. Sam sees some kind of thing doing something in Jack’s mouth at the moment of death. Not an owl, but something strange with too many legs. Maybe Edward isn’t crazy after all.

Judy was sleeping with Jack while her husband was off in the desert cultivating mushrooms every day. Jack’s death upsets their marriage in big ways.

While Art is in his mushroom garden he sees something that leads him to a cave where a tree grows magical fruit that makes you young again. This is when we get the first hint that the smarmy couple who run The Buroughs, Blaine (Seth Numrich) and Anneliese (Alice Kremelberg), might not be what they seem.

Judy the journalist finds a photo of Blaine from 1975 in which he looks exactly the same as now. What?!?

By now everyone in the cul-de-sac is in on the weirdness. They decide to find out what’s happening. The remainder of the series is this bunch of old farts chasing after scary secrets and spooky creatures. The cul-de-sac gang solves the mystery in clever ways that prove the value of science.

They get help from Paz (Carlos Miranda), a younger security guard who was dating Renee. He was willing to turn against The Buroughs, unlike the other people who worked there.

Guest stars like Dee Wallace, Mary McDonnell, and Anna Deavere Smith showed up for one episode to provide clues. #EldersRock big time in this series from the top stars to the cameos.

The Boroughs is streaming on Netflix. Every episode is available now. I recommend it.