When ABC Hailed The King: A Celebration of One of TV and Literature's Greatest Collaboration

 

Before we get started, I think I have to give a brief refresher for those of you who are under forty.

During the 1970s and 1980s, what we now consider the limited series looked nothing like it did in the way that HBO and Netflix do it today.  The mini-series was essentially the equivalent of ‘an event series’.  All three networks would be willing to sacrifice entire weeks of their prime time schedule to telling an entire story in two hours blocks. To be clear, this came out of the immense critical and popular success of Roots but there was just as many versions of it that were in their own ways just as magnificent: Rich Man,, Poor Man,; North and South, Lonesome Dove and quite a few others. This came to an end in the late 1980s after ABC’s adaptation of Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance was such as expensive failure that networks began scaling back on those kind of epics.

That did not mean the format changed or went away during the 1990s: only the number of nights they were willing to devote to these projects. To be clear, there had been many miniseries over time that had been two part and three part projects and during the 1990s they became the norm.  This involved compressing in stories but it didn’t always mean a sacrifice in quality.  And it was during this period that ABC began what would be one of the most successful collaborations between a writer and television probably in history.

To be clear Stephen King projects had been proliferating television during the 1980s just as so many film adaptations had. The problem was, of course, one that network television could never quite solve. How do you combine a man known for some of the most graphic images in horror with a medium that is always subject to censors? And the answer in the 1980s was, not well. King’s second novel Salem’s Lot was adapted into a two part miniseries in 1979. The best one can say about it is: it was good for what it was. It was a commercial hit, to be sure, but it was also incredibly bland. The fact that it managed to inspire a sequel Return to Salem’s Lot was a measure of its ratings rather than its quality.

There were similar attempts made throughout the 1980s that were, to say the least, not much better. A TV movie based on his short story Sometimes They Come Back with Tim Matheson as the lead came and went. (There’s a sequel to that, and its worse actually.) King made an attempt with a kind of series called Golden Years in which a seventy year old janitor gets exposed to a chemical formula and begins to grow younger.  There was a fair amount of talent attached to this series – gifted actors such as Keith Szarbaja, Frances Sternhagen, and an almost complete unknown named Felicity Huffman  - but CBS had no confidence in the property and aired in the summer of 1990 where it came and went. I barely remember and I can’t imagine you can find it anywhere.

To be clear during this period there were just as many King projects on film just as inadequate, and if anything, worse. Children of the Corn , a film that is so horrible I’m astounded that it’s the most successful franchise on his work, Firestarter, which is basically poorly acted and has lousy effects, Maximum Overdrive, one of the worst movies of the 1980s (which King himself wrote and directed) and Creepshow 2.  There were some treasures among the turds – The Dead Zone, Cujo and of course Stand By Me – but by the end of the decade, all but the most devoted horror fans were beginning to lose faith in the ability to successfully adapt any Stephen King project.

That started to change in the fall of 1990 when both a stellar film adaptation and a superb television adaptation of two of King’s greatest novel came to the screen. The movie, of course, was Misery  the first – and to date -only King film to win an Oscar for acting. Few people will ever forget Kathy Bates’ incredible performance as Annie Wilkes. Just as significant from the perspective of television was ABC’s adaptation of IT,.

Regardless of what one thinks of the series in retrospect  - and to be clear, I’ll acknowledge it was deeply flawed – what was far more important to fans of Stephen King was that television finally seemed to have cracked the code. The two-part series was a ratings hit and just as importantly, King fans embraced it.

For the next fifteen years Stephen King and ABC would collaborate on several exceptional adaptations – and in some cases, original projects – developed by King.  Eventually King himself began to write his adaptations and I’d argue that these projects are among the best adaptations of his own work, certainly for the small screen.  I would eventually see all of these projects, the majority of them when they originally aired. And because Stephen King is, well, Stephen King, it will be easy to find them streaming or on DVD.

Now since King gets rediscovered and many of his projects are constantly being revised, the question is should you see them or the newer versions that exist? I’ve seen a few of them too, so wearing my hats as a TV critics, a literary critic and a Constant Reader (as King calls us) I’ll give you my opinions.

 

1990: Stephen King’s It:  Adapted by Lawrence D. Cohen and Tommy Lee Wallace

I give this one more credit for tapping the wellspring than its actual quality.  It has quite a bit of genuine talent as many of these series do: the adults are played by some truly gifted actors: Harry Anderson, Dennis Cristopher, Annette O’Toole, Richard Masur, Richard Thomas, Harry Anderson (slightly tweaking his comic personality) and John Ritter (playing it perfectly straight) Of course all of this is dominated by Tim Curry, whose work as Pennywise is one of the main reasons to show.  This is also a chance to see the early work of Seth Green as well as Jonathan Brandis, a brilliant child actor whose committed suicide.

Much of the best work is in the first part as every character in the book receives calls from Mike and each of them have flashbacks to their past.  The scenes for the record don’t remotely gel with any of their original experiences with It in the original book with the sole exception of Bill’s, which is true in both cases. The final battle in 1960 has to be shifted to a more direct struggle (and honestly, I don’t blame either this version or the film for doing so; no matter how many times I read the book, it’s very hard to understand how the Losers triumph.) I also think the decision to make Stan the last character to receive the news instead of Bill is dramatically sound as it gives the first part the kind of ending it needs.

The second part has some good moments but the problem is not only that the kids aren’t there but that the final part tries to do far too much with too little time. I’ve always felt the series would have worked better with a three parts instead of two and that seems to have been the original plan. And I have to tell the descent into the sewer and the last half-hour are as anticlimactic as they seem now.

I give the project credit for getting what as much as they could on screen.  But I think that the film version that came out in 2017 is infinitely superior, far more faithful and much more frightening.  Part of it is because it’s on film, but honestly a lot of it is because the kids are far better performers and make their own stands. I also think the adult actors are far superior in every incarnation, and the ending is far more emotionally satisfying that either the mini-series – and I have to be honest, the book too.

See It: Only if you’re a completist.

 

The Tommyknockers (1993) Written by Lawrence Cohen, Directed by John Power

Okay I’m going completely against any true fan of King’s when I recommend you see this.  And its not because it’s really that good. It’s messy and its unpleasant, the special effects are mediocre and it basically wastes a great cast: from Jimmy Smits and Marg Helgenberger to E.G. Marshall. (When the best performance is given by Traci Lords, kind of says something about what you’re getting into). And I agree, the only reason you might like it is for reasons for pure camp: the dialogue is silly and the images are kind of ridiculous.

So why do I recommend it? Because with all its mediocrity, its still better than the book it was based on. I wrote an article last year that I thought The Tommyknockers is by far the worst novel King’s ever written because by far it’s the bleakest when it comes to every character’s fate. Which to be clear, means that every single resident of the town dies except for two young boys who are reunited at the end, but don’t yet know that their parents and everyone they know is dead. (In the world of King, this is what counts as a happy ending for much of his work.) Cohen, for all his flaws, seems to have realized that this was too bleak for his viewers to take and revised it to save the town and let most of the good people live.  Hell, he even let’s the pet dog come back to life.

Now I grant you most of the reasons to watch this may fall into the camp category, but that always works better for horror. If you love the book, don’t see this. If you find the book a weak link in King’s canon – and most of his devoted fans do – you’ll probably like this.

See It: Only if you don’t like the book.

 

The Stand (1994) Written by King, Directed By Mick Garris

The crown jewel of the ABC/Stephen King collaboration, this is one of the great projects King got for the small screen until Peak TV finally figured out to use him right a few years ago. I was recently fortunate enough to get a VHS recording taped the days the series aired in April of 1994 and it is still everything you think of it.

I will be writing about the book itself in a different series, but this is one of the most complete adaptations of any King novel and is an argument that the author is the best person to adapt his own work. King took what worked of his 816 page magnum opus (the uncut version had come out by then, but there were very few things from it that make the cut here) and compresses it into one of the best productions of the apocalypse I’ve ever seen before or since.  Most of his cast were not celebrities at the time, but they were some of the greatest actors of their era. Molly Ringwald and Rob Lowe did much to revive their flagging careers as Fran and Nick Andros. Gary Sinise made an impression on TV that would make him one of the great actors of his era in the next two decades. Ray Walston continued the remarkable late career renaissance that had started with Picket Fences two years earlier.  Jamey Sheridan gave one of his best performances as King’s quintessential villain Randall Flagg. Ruby Dee was just as exceptional as Mother Abagail (her husband Ossie Davis made a smaller part as Judge Farris his own). And several of the most gifted actors in TV  for years to come – Miguel Ferrer, Laura San Giacomo and Bill Fagerbakke –  did some of their best work.

There are also several remarkable smaller performances throughout and images you won’t forget.  I’ve never been able to shake the image of Kareem-Abdul Jabar playing a character known as ‘the monster shouter’, walking the streets of NYC screaming ‘Bring Out Your Dead’, as the city is looting and skyscrapers have fires raging in them.  Ed Harris plays a military figure as the plague rages across the country who thinks it is more important to keep the cover story in place even as the world ends. And Kathy Bates has a cameo as a talk radio host who listens to her callers and asks about what they think as the plague rages.  Fran is listening as the military comes in and executes her.

Few King projects have ever had the resonance of this series (it was nominated for Outstanding Miniseries that year and won for its makeup and sound mixing.) Garris’ direction is perfect and the score perfectly mixes both original music and the right kings of songs. Few who have seen the opening where ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’ plays over a lab where hundreds of scientists lie dead of the plague that will soon destroy the world will ever forget it. I made a deliberate decision not to seek out the limited version that came out a few years ago in any form. Nothing can surpass what I saw here.

See It: Absolutely.

 

The Langoliers:  Written and Directed by Tom Holland

This is a disappointment. Holland as genre fans know, is by far one of the greatest forces in Horror. By the time he’d took on The Langoliers, he’d already written such classics as Fright Nights, Child’s Play. He’d written and directed for Tales from the Crypt. The subject for this adaptation is one of the better works King ever did. Part of his collection Four Past Midnight, it deals with a red-eye flight from LAX to Boston in which ten passengers all wake up and find that all of their fellow passengers and crew are gone – and so is the rest of the world. They eventually manage to land the plane and soon find that is the least of their problems. (This might be an ancestor text to Lost but King has never laid claim to that idea and he has been a huge fan of the show.)  There really isn’t any gore to speak of. Why didn’t it work?

Most of the performances don’t work, for one.  There are some good actors in this cast – David Morse, Dean Stockwell, Patricia Wettig, but they basically seem flat in the series. Bronson Pinchot, who has the role of the human villain, tries to overcorrect and he’s just terrible at it. The story can manage some suspense as long as we don’t see what looks like its causing the impending threat, but once we see the Langoliers, you almost want to start laughing. To be fair, they are exactly as described in the book. To be just as fair, they don’t seem very frightening then.

This is a very lousy production and worse it’s failure combined with the disastrous reception to Holland’s adaptation of King’s Thinner a year later, seems to have caused him to basically retire from the business. He has done some anthology series here and there and he’s occasionally appeared in films as himself.. But there’s a chance this drove him out of the Hollywood. His last project has been an animated version of this story as if he’s trying to correct his wrongs. I’m sorry Tom. The characters in the Langoliers traveled back in time but you still can’t get good work out of this.

See It?: Try not To

 

The Shining (1997) Written by Stephen King; Directed By Mick Garris

This is the most controversial one on the list because we know why it was made. King famously hates the Stanley Kubrick version of the film, which to this date many people consider a masterpiece. Roger Ebert considered it one of the greatest films ever made, putting it in his third book on Great Movies.  There were many who considered what King did an act of pettiness and vindictiveness and were inclined to hate this out the gate.

The thing is, King’s not wrong to feel this way. There is much to admire in Kubrick’s film – it is everything they say it is. But what it isn’t is an adaptation of King’s novel in any real sense of the word.  Kubrick seems to have taken the bare bones of the plot and basically chose to do what he wanted with every aspect of the story. I can understand why King was not consider this an adaptation of his work.

By contrast, the mini series is a truer one and if you are a fan of the novel, this is the version to want to read.  For all Nicholson’s power as a performer, it’s hard to tell when he goes crazy in the movie. You can see it happen over time in the work of Steven Weber. Who over a period of two days gradually goes mad.  It’s easier to be on the inside of Wil Horneff as Danny than the one we see in The Shining, and in the case it seems its trying to help him as much as drive him mad. And Kubrick’s treatment of Shelly Duvall was so monstrous during the film that she basically retired from acting not long after the movie.  This notoriously did disservice to Wendy who is the tower of strength in the book and who is the only reliable narrator. Rebecca De Mornay’s version is cooler and slowly realizes the threat.

You never sense the Torrance’s were a loving family in Kubrick’s film. They’re broken in this, but they’re trying to heal which makes what happens more tragic. It’s also more true to the film in the details – the lawn topiary attacking Danny, Jack’s gradual madness rather than complete deterioration, the croquet mallets, even the phrases Jack shouts when he’s hunting his family. And for the record, the ending of the movie bares no resemblance to what happens in the book. This version does and adds a bonus closer to canon both in the fate of Jack Torrance and a twist that is actually keeping with King.

Honestly, I think horror fans can freely enjoy both. The former is only available on DVD and VHs but it’s worth searching out and watching. (By the way Doctor Sleep the movie is a sequel to the film version of The Shining, not the book. Maybe in a few years we’ll get a mini-series of that too.)

See It: Seek it out.

 

Storm of the Century (1999) Written by King; Directed by Craig R. Baxley

By this point King was getting more ambitious and wrote his first original mini-series for TV and it’s arguably one of his works for any screen.  The series tells the story of ‘the Big Blow’ which took place on Little Tall Island. Constable Mike Anderson (Tim Daly) is dealing with the preparation of a big blizzard when a man named Andre Linoge appears on the island. He walks into a house, knocks on the door, and says: “Give me what I want and I’ll go away” before bashing an old woman’s brains out.

Linoge is waiting for Anderson and seems more than happy to be taken into custody. As he walks into the jail, he seems to know all the secrets of the town and is more than happy to share them. It turns out that Linoge has no problem committing a reign of terror even behind the pitiful cell.  As the blow continues, it’s clear that he knows their secrets and that he’s not human. By the time the desperate town-folk hold a meeting to hear Linoge out, they learn what he wants – and are in such horror that only Mike seems able to stand in a pitiful dissent.  What he gets from the town is so horrible that most involved are wrecked by it for years after the fact. But as Mike tells us, he thought he’d learned just how horrible it was during the big blow. He finally learns the truth years later – and it’s even worse.

This original production featured some of the most gifted character actors I’ve seen, past and present. Jeffrey DeMunn plays an oily town manager who finds all his secrets were never buried. Debrah Farentino plays Mike’s wife who becomes increasingly horrified by what happens over the next few days and whose decision is so horrible that she can never forgive herself for it. This is my first memory of Julianne Nicholson, who plays a frail teenager and who I have admired as one of TV’s great performers ever since. But the standout work is Colm Feore as Linoge. Feore is one of the most gifted character actors I’ve seen over the years; he’s played heroes as well as villains but he’s rarely been used to better effect here.

This series is etched into your memory long after it ends and is one of the great pure horror pieces I ever saw broadcast TV do. Seek it out. You’ll spend the first two parts wondering what Linoge wants. When you find out in the third, it’ll make you question just what you would do as much as Mike does at the end.

See It: With the lights on. In the spring.

 

Rose Red (2002) Written by King; Directed by Baxley

Because of the immense popular and critical success of Storm, ABC had no problem when King adapted his next original project with Baxley a few years later. They had no problem giving King the same budget and releasing it on three consecutive days in January. (They’d done the same with Storm of the Century, in both cases giving it prime sweeps territory.) I have little doubt they expected the same critical reception. Instead, they got their weakest project from King since he’d started writing his own series for ABC.

Why doesn’t Rose Red work? It’s not so much that’s it just a variation of the haunted house genre and Shirley Jackson in particular; King has been riffing on genres for careers and making them his own.  It’s that he creates an interesting back story – there was even a tie-in book about Ellen Rimbauer that came out in conjunction with this series – and basically uses so little of it in the main action. And by far the biggest problem is who he casts in the lead role of Joyce Reardon.

Nancy Travis is a superb actress but it’s almost entirely in comic roles. She is incapable of channeling the inner darkness and arrogance that Joyce Reardon requires because she’s spent her entire career before and after playing nice people. Kyra Sedgwick or Andrea Parker (back then, female actresses asked to play dark characters on TV were few and far between and Edie Falco was busy) could have done it; Travis was incapable.  And I’m not sure most of this superb cast, from Kevin Tighe to the basically unknown Melanie Lynskey and Emily Deschanel were well utilized and Kimberly Brown had nothing to work with as Annie. It doesn’t help that King has always been weak when it comes to writing strong female characters most of the time in his fiction (it’s only in the last decade that he seems to have gotten it down cold; he could never have come up with Holly Gibney in 2002)

It's uneven and there’s no part of it that worked for me. I’ll admit I might be prejudiced because during this period my fanboy love of King was starting to fall apart (Dreamcatcher came out around this time and its one of his worst novels). Some might be inclined to revisit it twenty years later and maybe I will. But my memories of it aren’t fond.

See It?: I wouldn’t. Judge for yourself.

 

There are many reasons why King’s relationship with ABC began to break down after this point – the rise of cable, the decline of the mini-series and TV movie as something network TV would indulge in at all – but the most direct reason might well have been a change in leadership at ABC.

During this period ABC was going through a rocky period in the ratings and the president of the network Lloyd Braun was fired in April of 2004. This change at the top ended up helping ABC’s fortunes short and long-term: in the fall of 2004, the network debuted such critical and ratings hits as Desperate Housewives, Boston Legal and Lost, and that winter Grey’s Anatomy ended up premiering. ABC’s fortunes had radically changed.

But in adjusting its fortunes to becoming a new powerhouse in primetime, as a result they began to get rid of dead weight. And that weight included King. It did not help that his series project for the network Kingdom Hospital had been greenlit by Braun and had failed.  King and the kind of work he had done seemed of a different era. So in the spring of 2006 ABC more or less cut bait with King in Desperation.

And to be clear, they really shoved him to the curb.

Desperation (2006) Written by King; Directed by Mick Garris

King made no secret as to how angry he was about how what would be his final project for ABC turned out and he had every right to be.  Rather than allow him even a two part series for his novel, they only allowed him to have what amounted to a three hour TV movie, which is an ungainly amount of time for any project. Then to add insult to injury, rather than give him a sweeps time slot Desperation didn’t air until the end of ABC’s 2005-2006 season and opposite the season finale of American Idol.  This would have been shabby treatment for anybody; much less a man who was one of the most successful authors of all time.

And I’m not going to lie. Desperation is a mess. But it’s the kind of mess that could have worked had King and Garris been allowed to do what they usually did.  Most of the good parts of the novel are there: the opening involving the Jacksons when we think we’re going to be following Peter and Mary and Peter is killed off in the first scene.  Collier Entragian in the book is six feet five and in his thirties which Ron Perlman is not; but you don’t give a damn because Perlman’s face and voice are absolutely perfect for the monster within. The decision to keep using it as Tak jumps from body to body is the right one.

Steven Weber is as good as here as he was in The Shining.  Annabeth Gish is very good as increasingly terrified Mary. Tom Skerritt and Charles Durning as always never step wrong. You get a chance to see Samantha Hanratty, who has spent the last few years on Yellowjackets playing someone anything but innocent in an early role as one of the most innocent of victims. And King never relents in the darkness of his vision, not only in who he kills off but who he lets live.

You can see that had this been divided into two or three episodes it could have worked well enough and been at the level of King’s other work for ABC. Instead what you get is a rush job with much of the better stuff hurried over and almost all the key moments left out. There could have been a great mini-series here and instead we get a horrible TV movie. It’s an ignominious end to a great partnership.

 

There’s a chance King may have seen the writing on the wall before this. That summer on TNT what amounted to an anthology series of King’s fiction called Nightmares & Dreamscapes aired on TNT. There were eight short stories over four weeks: each one an hour long. And frankly some were brilliant.

There was Battleground a fifty-three minute silent movie that pitches hitman played by William Hurt against an army of toy soldiers with real bullets.  This hit man is more than up to the job almost to the end. There’s ‘Umney’s Last Case’, a story where William H. Macy plays private eye Clyde Umney, whose shocked to see his familiar world falling apart – until he meets the man who created him and learns he’s a fictional character. (Macy got a SAG nomination for it) There’s The End of The Whole Mess, a story about the end of war, the coming of peace and the Messiah told in an hour of video tape. Given how short stories and anthologies go together, it’s a pity this only aired once.

 And it is not like King’s presence has disappeared from television. Netflix has been filming his short stories over the years; some of which one would have thought unfilmable. Adaptations of his work such have been turned into mini-series and even series, such as Mr. Mercedes, Lisey’s Story, The Outsider and most recently Chapplewaite an adaptation of his short story ‘Jerusalem’s Lot’, his prequel to Salem’s Lot.  He even adapted Lisey’s Story for Apple, for better or worse.

King will never go away because horror never goes away. And for all his flaws as a writer, he will always find new fans because his work does reach to new generations.  What is remarkable about his collaboration with ABC in retrospect was how good it was, considering all the limitations that network TV had and still does when it comes to  so much of King’s work. The gore and gruesome nature that cable and streaming have no problem with were non-starters when King was adapting The Stand, but its hard to image anything Paramount Plus version did, even when it was allowed to also have the profanity and sex that the ABC version couldn’t.  And considering how disastrous so many of King’s filmed original projects have been (Sleepwalkers comes to mind) it’s astonishing that something as brilliant as Storm of the Century managed to make it on network television and was as good it was.  Even Rose Red is by comparison a masterpiece to something like Maximum Overdrive where King had full creative control.

The era where King and ABC collaborated can almost certainly never be returned too and maybe that’s for the best.  But considering his track record with so many other directors and so many other forms of adaptations of his work, loose to the point of in-name-only to the point that they are basically literally, it’s hard not to argue that during this sixteen year period ABC was this particular King’s most faithful subject. Constant Readers and horror fans alike should be grateful for that.