There are several things we have come to expect from small-screen adaptations of Stephen King’s many, many novels and short stories and they are, generally speaking, these: there will be a small town beset by an Ageless Evil. There will be children, some of whom will be dead, others merely telekinetic and/or screaming in pyjamas. There will be blood. And flannel shirts. And dialogue so awful you will want to bludgeon it with a spade and inter it in an ancient burial ground, despite the suspicion that it will rise from the dead and continue to torment you.
Like the generally superior film versions of the author’s works, some of these TV adaptations will, in fact, be very enjoyable. Others will not. And then there is The Institute (MGM+), a new adaptation of a middling 2019 thriller that manages to capture the endearingly wonky essence of King’s genius by being both extremely well crafted and, at times, astonishingly silly. But how does it measure up to its predecessors?
Let us clamber into a flannel shirt and, screaming pre-emptively, explore the best and worst of small-screen Stephen King.
The worst
The Shining (1997)
Enraged by Stanley Kubrick’s magnificent interpretation of his 1977 novel (too little substance, apparently), King responded with a “definitive” adaptation of his own. Cue this two-part abomination, in which writer Jack Torrance (Steven Weber) terrorises his family with his definitive denim blouson and definitive inability to act. Further definitives: CGI topiary, a young Danny Torrance seemingly incapable of speaking without snuffling (sinusitis?) and a final showdown consisting of a mallet-wielding Jack chasing his nasal son past the same endlessly looped stretch of hotel corridor.
Under the Dome (2013-2015)
A thunderously bovine fusion of small-town soap and big-budget sci-fi that includes plucky teens, military machinations, a soundtrack packed with SUDDEN and UNECESSARY NOISES and a bit where a pensioner in dungarees shouts, “OHHHH SHIIIIIIT” at half a sliced-in-two CGI cow. Stuffed from the word go, frankly, due to a premise so risible (alien egg makes indestructible transparent dome descend on town) you wouldn’t be surprised if the remaining half of the sliced-in-two CGI cow turned to camera and begged to be put out of its misery.
Storm of the Century (1999)
A tiny Maine island is besieged by exposition when a stranger in a small hat arrives during a blizzard. The upshot? Tedium. Plus? Levitating guns, CGI snow and hundreds of minor characters, one of whom will, every half hour or so, extend their neck out of the gloom to announce a terrible new subplot before telescoping it back in again while everyone else nods and says, “yuh”. Not an adaptation, per se, but an original “novel for TV” (© Stephen King), which is shorthand for “257 minutes of Stephen King being emphatically Stephen King only more so”.
The Stand (2020-2021)
The apex of the “large group of out-of-focus extras stands around nodding while a foregrounded hunk expounds on the best way to tackle whatever is threatening the community” genre. In this instance, the threat is twofold. Namely 1) a viral apocalypse and 2) a script that takes King’s outstanding 1978 fantasy by its ankles and shakes it until its brain falls out. Makes even the 1994 adaptation (Gary Sinise shouting “Noooo” at a field for six hours) look tolerable by dint of bewildering flashbacks, zero tension, general confusion, Whoopi Goldberg and wolves.
The Langoliers (1995)
Some people disappear from a plane, some other people argue about it, one of these people gets eaten by angry space meatballs, the end. A terrible reminder that the worst King has always been sci-fi King, this three-hour duffer has more in common with the appalling “shouting ensemble” disaster films of the 70s than anything “one” might wish to watch with one’s “TV dinner”. The result? A miniseries so volcanically dull you had to prick your telly with a fork, like a baked potato, to let the yawns out.
The best
The Institute (2025)
A tyrannical bootcamp for telekinetic children, you say? With a small-town backdrop, federal bastardry and eccentrics in plaid prophesying on porches? Why, ’tis season four of Stranger Things! Except it isn’t. Welcome, instead, to a very solemn eight-part thriller, in which awful things happen slowly to good actors (not least Joe Freeman, son of Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington) and YA friendships bloom despite the presence of lines of the “you are about to participate in saving the world!” variety. It is, if you will, Stranger Kings.
The Tommyknockers (1993)
Nothing says 1993 like Jimmy Smits being punched by an alien while shouting “Woah” in chinos. And so it proved with this confounding oddity, a sci-fi potboiler that cartwheels into the “actually hugely watchable” category by virtue of everything from acting to special effects being coated in an almost certainly accidental layer of camp. Cue swirling green gas, comedy dogs, cursed shrubbery, killer dolls, xenomorphs tiptoeing gingerly around a cardboard spaceship and the line, “I’m gonna nuke you!”
Salem’s Lot (1979)
Not just the finest Stephen King TV adaptation, but one of the finest horror “events” of the 1970s, by jove. The reason? Genuinely nightmarish imagery (dead schoolboys clawing at bedroom windows, bald vampires rising slowly from kitchen floors, etc) and a near-constant sense of clammy dread. Further proof that when it comes to miniseries, it pays to employ a proper director (Tobe “Poltergeist” Hooper, in this instance) as opposed to, say, an upturned bucket in a turtleneck.
It (1990)
King’s 1,100-page masterpiece becomes a wildly memorable miniseries, with the obligatory horrible bits (bloodied plugholes, whispering plugholes, murderous transdimensional entities bursting out of plugholes, etc) accompanied by a smart pace and rare emotional investment in the fate of its trembling young protagonists. And then there is, of course, Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown; a performance of such grotesque enormousness it threatens to explode out of the screen.
The Outsider (2020)
HBO steeples its fingers over King’s 2018 midweight mystery and proceeds to say, “Hmm” slowly … across 10 episodes … of glacially paced … child murder and …Detective Ben Mendelsohn’s … investigative … jeans. And yet. The direction is excellent, the themes (buried grief! The nature of faith!) are explored thoughtfully rather than pounded feverishly with hammers and everything is marinated in that woozy greige lighting that indicates we are in the presence of Proper Acting and are thus unlikely to encounter, say, a pensioner in dungarees shouting, “OHHHH SHIIIIIIT” at half a sliced-in-two CGI cow.
