‘The Horror of Dolores Roach’ Bakes Humor (and Humans) in Wild New Series

How’s this for meta storytelling and see if you can keep up: Prime’s new dramedy series, The Horror of Dolores Roach (streaming July 7), is based on a scripted, fictional podcast from 2018. The show begins on the opening night of a fictional play, which is based on the podcast, but treats the grisly events of the podcast as if they were real, and not a modern urban legend produced for your listening pleasure by Gimlet Media. If that seems hard to follow, don’t worry. The Horror of Dolores Roach makes it easy for you—and supplies plenty of macabre thrills along the way.

The series introduces us to the titular Dolores Roach (a typically brilliant Justina Machado) who pops up at the play about her life, years after a string of murders in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood put her on the run. But Dolores isn’t in the audience to be part of the standing ovation, she’s got a few notes for the lead actress. There’s a record that Dolores would like to correct: She’s not just the woman who killed people and fried their remains in some wildly popular empanadas. She’s also a victim of circumstance and system, and this is her one chance to tell her side of the story.

The Horror of Dolores Roach is told almost entirely through flashbacks, which are complemented by Machado’s stellar voiceover narration, reminding viewers that the show is leading up to the present moment at the theater. In these recollections, we meet a struggling Dolores just released from a 16-year prison stint, trying to reacclimate to her old neighborhood which looks entirely new after gentrification tore through it. Like many former prisoners who are released with few resources at their disposal, it’s not easy for Dolores to get her bearings. Though Dolores might be a gifted masseuse, she soon realizes that her hands are as good for her protection as they are for her profession.

What starts out as a deliciously dark horror-comedy slowly transforms into something much more resonant over the course of eight perfectly paced episodes. Despite all the laughs—and there are plenty of hearty ones in each installment—the series doesn’t skim over the harsh realities of gentrification and the prison pipeline. That authenticity gives this over-the-top series its grounding points, while Machado eats up every last scene, turning Dolores Roach into a new signature character, and the series into one of the year’s most fresh.

The Horror of Dolores Roach arrives at the perfect time: Cannibalism is soooo hot right now. Just take the uber-popularity of Showtime’s Yellowjackets, or last year’s underrated thriller Fresh. But to be fair, the podcast that inspired the show arrived before either of those, and unlike other man-eating media, Dolores Roach uses cannibalism as a mere side plot, not the full feast. Think of it like Sweeney Todd, except Dolores is the demon masseuse of Washington Heights, not Fleet Street, and there are no obnoxious songs to sit through.

Giuliani-era New York cracked down hard on drug offenses, and though Dolores got caught in the crosshairs of her drug-dealing boyfriend Dominic’s police bust, she took the fall for the man she loved. That meant more than a decade in prison for a weed-related crime, and getting released just before many with marijuana charges had their sentences commuted. As a free woman, Dolores returns to Washington Heights, and finds what was once a vibrant neighborhood filled with its longtime residents—almost entirely people of color—now overrun by coffee shops, luxury buildings, and white yuppies.

With Dominic long gone, Dolores turns to a shining beacon of adobo-scented hope, Empanada Loca, a restaurant left over from her heyday. The shop is now run by chef Luis (Alejandro Hernandez)—an old friend of Dolores’—and his cellphone-glued counter girl, Nellie (Kita Updike). Before she knows it, Dolores is living in the basement with Luis, running an illegal massage business. But when the building’s landlord arrives, demanding more from Dolores than just back rent, things for the crew get a little, shall we say, cracked-up.

Dolores discovered the gift of her touch in prison, where the world-class massages she performed for commissary money earned her the nickname “Magic Hands.” Now that she’s out, those hands are useful for more than just oiling up backs; why not snap a few necks and suffocate a few lowlifes trying to cross her, too? When her adrenaline crashes after the first kill, Dolores wakes up to find the body gone, and Luis upstairs, selling a new, “trade-secret” flavor of empanadas that are already attracting more customers than the shop has seen since before Dolores went to jail.

The show may be gruesome, but it’s not hard to watch; even the most squeamish among us should be able to handle a few empanadas filled with human flesh. The on-screen violence and gore are relatively minimal, and even a little cartoonish at some points. But that just makes for some truly hilarious kill sequences. Dolores is a reluctant serial killer, and though she learned her methods in prison, she’s a bit rusty when it comes to putting them to practice. Combined with Luis’ dopey business ideas and Nellie’s clueless cashier jabs, and Dolores rounds out a hilarious central trio of murderous misfits.

But a life of crime was never Dolores’ intention. All she wanted was to make a new, honest life for herself, one that wasn’t defined by revenge… or feeding poor strangers their fellow man. The Horror of Dolores Roach is a heightened look at how difficult it is for formerly imprisoned people to reacclimate into society, and how impossible the powers that be make it for them to start from scratch without bending the rules. The show covertly depicts the horrors of the prison pipeline, running parallel to the ones that Dolores is facing as things continue to go south. Every denigration of Dolores’ hope to better her life after prison triggers her rage and acts of violence, until the lines between trying to do right and trying not to become another victim of the system blur entirely.

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As the difference between right and wrong becomes hazy, the show’s cast of characters turn increasingly strange; look out for a very silly, gray-wigged Cyndi Lauper as a theater-obsessed amateur detective, and the always charming K. Todd Freeman as a shafted butcher. Those two—plus a new weed dealer on the block, known affectionately to Dolores as “cuntface”—help make Empanada Loca busier than ever. The restaurant’s booming popularity, with so many characters sniffing around, gives Dolores Roach a delightfully claustrophobic atmosphere as the season reaches its back half.

For all this talk about the prison pipeline and broken systems, The Horror of Dolores Roach doesn’t try too hard to make grand, sweeping statements throughout its fabulous first season. Instead, the show makes perfectly bite-sized digs at bureaucratic establishments that are far more filling than empty wisdom. There is no one better than Machado to make those points. She brings firsthand experience with some of the show’s themes and impressive acting chops, turning Dolores Roach a fully fleshed (pun intended), blisteringly realistic powerhouse. Macahdo’s expertise weighs on the audience, allowing us to feel all that pressure of a broken world stacked on top of you—and the extreme places that trying to move on might just push you.

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