The Burbs is a comedy about a group of neighbors in a cul-de-sac in what was supposed to be the safest town in America.

This remade version of The Burbs uses some of the same ideas and sets as the 1989 version with Tom Hanks you may remember seeing. It was filmed on the same backlot street at Universal Studios Hollywood as the first one. The same Victorian mansion is featured. The series contains a clever hat tip to Tom Hanks.

Samira (Keke Palmer) and Rob (Jack Whitehall) move into the cul-de-sac with their newborn son. His parents own the house, but are on a permanent cruise. Samira and Rob have been in the city for 20 years, but decided to try the burbs because of the available house, and the safety of the place to raise their son.

Samira learns immediately that racism is alive in the suburbs. After the neighbors learn she is Rob’s wife, they accept her, but every new person she meets treats her with suspicion. The only other Black character was eleven year old go-getter Rory (Kyrie Mcalpin), who sometimes baby sat for Samira and Rob.

Samira is a new mom with time to look out the windows and wonder about the neighbors, and especially about what happened in the crumbling Victorian across the street. Her husband Rob and his best friend Naveen (Kapil Talwalkar) were friends with Alison who lived in that house when they were kids. Alison vanished 20 years ago. Neither Rob or Naveen wanted to talk about it. Curiosity was killing Samira.

The neighbors were all a little odd. Samira befriended most of them and joined them for wine and gossip in the evenings. (It bothered me a lot that a nursing mom would drink wine every night.) This crowd included the widow Lynn (Julia Duffy), Dana (Paula Pell) – a former Marine who said her wife was currently deployed, and Tod (Mark Proksch) who was some sort of tech security expert.

Samira was sure something funny was going on in the Victorian. She and the neighbors ran conspiracy theories up against each other every evening as to where the missing Alison could be – maybe buried in the basement of the Victorian. It was silly and funny, but they were dead serious about it. Out to solve true crimes.

The president of the HOA also lived on the cul-de-sac. She was Agnes (Danielle Kennedy). They all hated her and her pooping pup Darla. She was excluded from the gossip sessions.

Gary (Justin Kirk) bought the Victorian. Wow. Now everyone’s spidey senses were going crazy. He wasn’t friendly. He put up no trespassing signs. He went into the basement a lot. Did he have something to do with the missing Alison?

They were determined to find out. They did a lot of goofy and misguided sleuthing, formed wild theories for every new fact, and generally bumbled and stumbled into actually helping solve a mystery. But that wasn’t the only mystery, a fact we learn just as the season ends, leaving us with a cliffhanger.

I hope the cliffhanger means a second season is on the way. I really enjoyed this series. It’s ridiculous in so many ways, but entertaining. The actors were wonderful, especially Keke Palmer and Jack Whitehall. I loved how odd and peculiar all the characters were and how they all stuck together to solve a problem.

This series was created for television by Celeste Hughey. Several of the directors were women: Thembi Banks, Rachel Goldberg, Yana Gorskaya, Heather Jack, Natalia Leite, and Nzingha Stewart.

You can see the entire first season on Peacock.