Some shows sell themselves in a single sentence, and Phony is one of them: a teenager wakes up from a coma and is sure the woman at his bedside only looks like his mother. The eight-part series started on Hulu on October 20 with two episodes, and the rest will follow week by week.
Sam Nivola, familiar from The White Lotus, plays Sonny, a slightly nerdy and widely liked kid in a small Oregon town who helps out everyone and knows a bit too much about all of them. His mother Ellen, played by Connie Britton, raises him alone and also happens to run his high school, so the two are close in a way that is sweet and occasionally suffocating. After a fallen tree pushes his car off the road and leaves him unconscious for a week, Sonny returns to a life that looks exactly as it did, apart from the nagging certainty that Ellen has been swapped. With no adults on his side, he recruits Mallory, a returning classmate played by Grace Brennan, to investigate.
Creator Nick Paley, who helped write Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, runs the show with Anthony King, and that background explains the tone. Instead of pure horror, the series mixes paranoia with gentle teen comedy and a scene-stealing local beaver. Early critics have praised Britton for playing warmth and menace in the same glance.
The cast, the creative team and the first reactions are collected in this Phony premiere guide.
Our directory pick: start with the double opener if you enjoyed Search Party or Only Murders in the Building. Whether the finale solves its central puzzle remains to be seen, but the ride there already looks fun.
