The weather is pretty dicey, the locals are more than a little crazy, and your lodgings might be haunted by an evil clown, but there’s no better place than to visit than Widow’s Bay. Just don’t plan on staying.

Widow’s Bay, a horror comedy streaming on Apple TV+, just won a boatload of Emmys during Monday’s award ceremony. In addition to Outstanding Comedy Series, awards for writing, directing and cinematography, two awards for music, and four technical awards (editing, production design, sound), the cast picked up four Emmys out of six nominations.

Matthew Rhys, who plays Mayor Tom Loftis, won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, and Stephen Root, who plays Wyck Crawford, island conspiracy theorist, won Outstanding Supporting Actor. Kate O’Flynn, who plays Tom’s assistant Patricia Moyer, beat out castmate Dale Dickey (Rosemary) for an Outstanding Supporting Actress trophy. Betty Gilpin won an Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Sarah Westcott, but Hamish Linklater did not receive the statuette for his role as her husband Richard Warren. All in all, there were 14 wins out of 19 nominations.

While that’s a lot of awards, that may not be enough to persuade everyone, let alone anyone, to give this show a try. At first glance, the show, about the somewhat crazy residents of a fictional New England island town called Widow’s Bay, which may or may not be cursed, seems a bit odd, at best. And it’s billed as a horror comedy? Which is it – scary or funny?

The answer is both, of course. Admittedly, the first episode, which introduces the characters and sets up the “maybe it’s cursed” idea, is a bit of a slow burn. Mayor Loftis (Rhys) is trying to sell the town as a tourist destination to a New York Times travel writer by underplaying the island’s spooky history, but the denizens of the town refuse to act normal for the reporter’s visit, much to Tom’s frustration.

To Tom’s surprise, though, the writer was impressed enough to laud the town in his article, which means more tourists will be descending on the island, just as things are about to get really weird. If you aren’t a fan after the first episode, keep going till you’ve seen the second, where Tom must stay at the Breakwater Inn because he wants to prove its not haunted like all the locals say it is. Spoiler: it does appear to be more than a little haunted.

This should be the episode that convinces you that A) this show is really scary and 2) it’s also really funny. Widow’s Bay, unlike The Bear, wasn’t put in the comedy category just because there was nowhere else to put it. The sight of a clown fast-crawling towards a man trapped in the crawlspace of a possessed bed and breakfast will almost certainly have you gripping the edge of your seat in terror, while simultaneously laughing yourself silly.

The show, which had its inaugural season this year, was created by Katie Dippold, who serves as showrunner. Episodes were directed by Hiro Murai, Sam Donovan, Andrew DeYoung and Ti West, who helmed one very pivotal episode set in the island’s Puritan past.

Further episodes play with other horror conventions: a sea hag, a curse that keeps anyone born on the island from ever leaving the island, a serial killer, a cocktail party from hell, an ominous fog, the return of a dead founder, and the storm of the century, to name but a few, and every time the scares are delivered with sides of wickedly black humor.

Actors like Rhys, Root, O’Flynn and Gilpin richly deserved their wins, and Linklater and Dickey their nominations, if not wins. Stephen Root won his first Emmy during the ceremony, which is almost shocking given his career playing so many different types of characters: business tycoon Jimmy James on NewsRadio, the voice of simple Bill Dauterive on King of the Hill, the manipulative hitman on Barry, and innumerable other roles. That the win came for his role as Wyck, the contentious voice of doom on Widow’s Bay, is quite fitting.

Rhys shows off his physical comedy chops here as Mayor Tom, who is beset by a sea hag, sent on a mushroom trip against his will, and terrorized by clowns. Initially skeptical of the town’s supposed cursed nature, he becomes a convert and becomes the opposite of Amity Island Mayor Vaughn in Jaws – he wants to close the town down to visitors and quarantine everyone if it will keep everyone safe, though it will harm his crusade to increase tourism. Rhys also gets to display great range, as he must parent his teenage son and keep him safe too, while trying to give the boy hope for the future. It’s no wonder that Rhys, who has won many a trophy before, set a record on Monday with two lead actor wins; in addition to the win for Widow’s Bay, he won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series for his work on The Beast In Me for Netflix.

Betty Gilpin and Hamish Linklater are stellar in their flashback episode set in 1702 where we learn some Widow’s Bay history. Gilpin’s character discovers her arranged marriage is less advantageous than most in the Ti West episode. West’s direction makes the atomosphere in Widow’s Bay even more ominous and palpably dreadful, while still letting touches of humor lighten the mood here and there. Linklater, who recurs in the modern era of the show, is especially funny after his revival, and it’s pretty surprising that he didn’t win for his limited role.

Dale Dickey is an absolute hoot as the deadpan, chain-smoking archivist Rosemary, who steals every scene she’s in, but the real MVP of Widow’s Bay is Kate O’Flynn as Patricia. Her face gives away her every thought, she’s perpetually frustrated, and she’s been shunned by the island’s popular girls since high school, but she is easily the most relatable character (as far as I’m concerned) on the show. She has contended for years that she was the sole survivor of the island’s resident serial killer, the Boogeyman, when it attacked her and her classmates. No one believes her, which makes her the perfect victim for when the Boogeyman returns for a new killing spree after a long period of dormancy. I don’t want to spoil anything else, but her performance in this episode alone is likely the one that cinched her win. It is gut-bustingly funny and obviously written by someone with a deep love of the slasher genre.

It’s impossible to explain using mere words why Widow’s Bay is so good, and why it has such a devoted online following, and why it won all those awards. You really, really need to be there. You can visit Widow’s Bay, all ten episodes of it, on Apple TV+. A second season has been promised, but no premiere dates have been announced yet.