Netflix released The Boroughs on Thursday, an eight-episode supernatural mystery set and filmed in New Mexico. Alfred Molina, one of the series’ leading players, is the named face at the center of a story about retirees fighting monsters in a seemingly perfect retirement community.
The scale of the production underlines the gamble: the show filmed for roughly six months across 2024 and 2025 at more than 20 sites around New Mexico, employed more than 300 local vendors and put 350 cast and crew to work. The production turned a former outlet mall between Albuquerque and Santa Fe into the eponymous community and repurposed the old Ramada hotel at 25 Hotel NE, later renamed Juniper Flats, as a central location on screen.
The Boroughs is built around a tight premise — a group of retirees in a retirement community fighting monsters — but the numbers and the locations are what make the series feel like an event rather than a small drama. An eight-episode run gives the story room to move, the months of location work tether it to a distinct place, and the investment in vendors and crew is a visible local footprint.
Set detail matters here: the series is staged in a retirement enclave that looks perfected on first glance but hides darker secrets, and the production’s use of real, scattered New Mexico sites created that uneasy contrast on screen. The former outlet mall’s wide, empty storefronts and the rebranded Ramada at 25 Hotel NE supply the artificial calm that the plot then punctures with its supernatural intrusions.
There is a built-in tension between the show’s sunny, suburban veneer and its monster-driven disruptions. The Boroughs leans into that friction: older characters cast as unlikely heroes, a community meant to be insulated and safe, and a string of scenes that trade retirement calm for sudden violence and mystery. That contradiction — the calm turned dangerous — is the engine of the series and what sets it apart from more ordinary dramas about aging or small-town secrets.
The production’s footprint also matters off screen. Filming across more than 20 sites and hiring hundreds of local vendors and crew turned the show into a local production story as much as a national streaming launch. The choice to shoot in New Mexico gave the series a desert-adjacent texture and allowed location work to define the look of the community where the action unfolds.
For viewers wondering who fills those roles, the boroughs cast includes Alfred Molina along with Geena Davis, Bill Pullman, Alfre Woodard and Clarke Peters. Their presence anchors the show’s odd mix of senior-life detail and supernatural stakes and answers the basic question the series asks at its core: who will stand up when a place meant to protect its residents starts to prey on them?
