What to Watch: The ’Burbs Turns Cul-de-Sacs Into Crime Scenes
- The Real Perspectives
- 6 hours ago
- 4 min read
Reel Perspectives
February 8, 2026
Keke Palmer leads Peacock’s darkly funny mystery about cul-de-sacs, coded smiles, and the kind of paranoia that comes from knowing you’re not wrong.
🏘️ In The ’Burbs, We Learn Nothing Stays Buried Forever
There is something deeply unsettling about a place that proudly calls itself “the safest town in America.” Because if you’ve watched even one Netflix documentary, you already know: the safer the slogan, the darker the secrets.
Enter The ’Burbs, Peacock’s new mystery-comedy starring Keke Palmer, premiering tonight. The series follows a young couple who reluctantly relocate to the husband’s childhood home, only to have their lives upended when a new neighbor moves in across the street — dragging decades-old secrets and fresh danger into their pristine cul-de-sac.
On paper, it sounds familiar. In practice? A young Black lawyer moving from the city to a mostly white suburb is a whole other level of fear that not everybody knows about.
As Keke's character puts it herself:
“It’s giving Get Out.”
Girl, with love, it’s giving Get Out 2: The Whitening.
You see, Keke plays Samira Fisher, a tenacious lawyer on maternity leave with her newborn son, Miles. She’s Black. Her husband, Jack Whitehall as Rob Fisher, is white, British, and suspiciously attached to Ashfield Place — a neighborhood that feels like a colonial postcard turned microaggression nightmare.
Like the white neighbors peer into baby Miles’ stroller and coo things like:
“What a cute little mocha munchkin!”
You almost expect someone to follow it up by announcing they would’ve voted for Obama a third time if they could. The suburbia sells itself as wholesome, but Samira hears the dog whistles loud and clear. The neighbors can’t introduce themselves without microaggressions. They side-eye her jamming to “Mind Playin' Tricks” in he own car. They call the cops over friendly drop-bys. They smile just enough to feel dangerous.
And from the jump, Samira’s creepiness detector is on high alert — especially when she notices the sprawling, decrepit Victorian house across the street. It doesn’t belong there. It looks like it was dropped into the neighborhood by mistake, like something out of The Munsters. The house has been empty for years, but as Samira soon learns, it’s not forgotten.
A teenage girl named Alison Grant went missing there two decades earlier. She was never found. And Rob, who grew up across the street, seems remarkably uninterested in discussing it.
At first, Samira tries to chalk up her unease to new-mom anxiety, boredom, and being a Black woman navigating aggressively polite whiteness. But when Justin Kirk as Gary, a sour-faced recluse, finally moves into the Victorian, her suspicions explode into obsession. This isn’t paranoia — it’s Black lady survival senses on 100.
The ’Burbs understands exactly why that tension works. It’s a dark comedy, yes — but also an uncomfortably real one.
The series smartly avoids becoming a straight reboot of the 1989 Tom Hanks cult classic, in which his character was an established local casting suspicion of eccentric new neighbors. Instead, The ’Burbs reimagines the premise for a 2026 audience that understands suburban paranoia differently — especially through a Black woman’s lens.
Keke Palmer’s chemistry, comedic timing, and sheer screen presence are the engine of the show. Samira’s hyper-awareness of her surroundings — her fashion, her confidence, her difference — trendy and exuberant amid a sea of polos and cardigans, becomes both armor and fuel. Watching her clock every weird interaction feels less like watching a mystery unfold and more like watching survival instincts sharpen in real time.
The ensemble surrounding her adds layers of absurdity and warmth. RJ Cyler as Langston, Samira’s brother, checks in from the city via FaceTime as the outside voice of reason. Julia Duffy as Lynn, a recently widowed wine lover, Paula Pell as Dana, a bored ex-Marine, and Mark Proksch as Tod, a mysteriously wealthy nerd, form a rotating porch-happy-hour conspiracy crew that feels like suburbia’s strangest Scooby-Doo gang.
At one point, Dana has the audacity to joke:
“Which one of us is the murderer?”
Ma'am… at this point, y’all could be the murderers.
What’s most compelling is that the secrets don’t always lead somewhere monstrous. Sometimes they’re sad. Sometimes they’re human. And sometimes they’re exactly what Samira feared. The Alison Grant mystery gives the season its structure, but the real journey is watching Samira — an outsider — slowly come to adore these bored and charming weirdos enough to play a chaotic game of Clue with them.
Produced by Seth MacFarlane and helmed by showrunner Celeste Hughey (Palm Royale, Dead to Me), The ’Burbs blends comedy, mystery, and social commentary without flattening any of them. Hughey and Palmer also serve as executive producers, alongside Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment. Dana Olsen, who wrote the original film, serves as a co-executive producer.
The ’Burbs may not send you running for the hills — but it will absolutely make you rethink how “safe” suburbia can really be.
Watch the trailer below:
The ’Burbs, a new original mystery-comedy series starring Keke Palmer, premieres with all eight episodes on Peacock TONIGHT.