Every Stephen King Miniseries Ranked From Worst To Best
Everyone knows about Stephen King's big-screen adaptations, but what about the small screen?
Once upon a time, Stephen King was the king of the miniseries. TV networks (especially ABC) would throw a ton of money at King to churn out a lengthy adaptation of one of his novels, or even an original work that they could slap his name on. These days, the idea of the miniseries doesn't quite exist anymore — in the age of streaming, it's been replaced by the more prominent "limited series." But there was something special about those glory days when network TV could turn a new King adaptation into a major event. You couldn't just fire up a streaming service and watch whenever you wanted — you'd have to tune in at a specific date and time and watch it as it unfolded. Something like that will never happen again — those days are over, folks. But we can look back at them with nostalgia while also embracing the future.
Below, I've rounded up all of King's miniseries (and more recent limited series, too) and ranked them from worst to best.
16. The Langoliers
Oh boy, let's get this one out of the way first, shall we? During a red-eye flight, the majority of people on board a passenger plane end up vanishing into thin air. The only folks remaining happened to be asleep whenever this strange occurrence happened. After landing the plane, the survivors find themselves in an alternate dimension that looks like ours, but where things don't quite work right. And oh yeah, there are flying cartoon meatballs with fangs on the way! Adapted from the novella of the same name, "The Langoliers" is a complete bust. It's never scary, it's never interesting, and when the titular time-eating monsters show up, they're laughable to the extreme. Even hardcore King fans want to forget about this.
15. Golden Years
Speaking of forgetting stuff, does anyone remember "Golden Years"? The original plan was for King's original script of "Golden Years" to become a full-blown TV series. But CBS, the network that produced the show, decided to not go ahead with the project. King asked for more airtime to write a proper ending, but the network said no to that, too. As a result, "Golden Years" is now a somewhat incomplete miniseries, telling the story of an elderly janitor who suddenly starts aging in reverse after surviving an explosion at the top-secret laboratory where he works. It's kind of like "The Incredible Hulk" meets "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." The end result is pretty boring, unfortunately. King has a cameo as a surly bus driver, so that's fun, I guess? Anyway, let's move on.
14. The Tommyknockers
King's "The Tommyknockers" novel is a messy, nasty piece of work. King himself has called the book "awful," chalking his distaste up to the fact that he was in the midst of a pretty serious drug addiction while writing it. It makes sense then that a TV adaptation of an "awful" book is pretty bad, too. You can see the cocaine-influenced madness at work here — the story involves people becoming "addicted" to the high created by alien technology — but it's never particularly interesting or scary. The harshness of the book has also been sanded down for the TV adaptation, although the miniseries is ultimately rather bleak and unpleasant overall.
13. Bag of Bones
"Bag of Bones" is one of several King adaptations helmed by Mick Garris, who also directed the absolutely bonkers King movie "Sleepwalkers." Sadly, this is one of the lesser King/Garris efforts. Adapted from King's haunted love story, the miniseries stars Pierce Brosnan (who is pretty good here) as a grieving widower and best-selling author who retreats to a summer house by a lake to deal with both his grief and a sudden case of writer's block. During his trip, he ends up in the middle of a nasty custody battle, and oh yeah, there are ghosts, too. "Bag of Bones" is one of King's duller novels, which means the adaptation isn't very compelling. It's not bad, exactly. It just never holds our interest, nor does it justify its runtime. A shorter one-part film might've worked better.
12. Rose Red
"Rose Red" was almost a big-screen feature that would've teamed King with Steven Spielberg. When that fell through, King eventually revisited the script and turned it into a miniseries. The story owes a lot to Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House," in that it follows a team of ghost hunters who set up shop in a big, creepy mansion. It features the usual King tropes, including a kid with psychic powers. But is it scary? Not really! It is kind of fun, though, and all of the characters are drawn rather well (even if some of them are a bit annoying). Bonus: King has a cameo as what appears to be the world's oldest pizza delivery boy.
11. The Stand (2020)
A modern-day remake of "The Stand" with a big cast sounds like a surefire hit, right? Incorrect! The 2020 take on "The Stand" arrived in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which might make a story about a killer plague all the more terrifying, at least in theory. Unfortunately, this new take on King's massive tome is a disappointment. The story and the complex characters have been dumbed down considerably. On top of that, the series tries to condense King's massive text by using the back-and-forth time-jump format popularized by "Lost." It doesn't work. A final episode penned by King himself is actually somewhat solid, but it ends up being too little too late.
10. The Shining
I think almost everyone knows at this point that Stephen King hated Stanely Kubrick's adaptation of "The Shining." That might sound crazy seeing as most people consider Kubrick's film to be a horror masterpiece, but King didn't care for the way Kubrick tinkered with his source material. In the 1990s, the master of horror finally got a chance to do things his way with a miniseries adaptation of "The Shining" helmed by Mick Garris. So is it better than the Kubrick film? Oh, heavens, no. Not even close. Sure, it's a heck of a lot more faithful to the book. But it's often painfully literally, and the ghosts look like extras from an episode of "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" Still, Garris and King deserve some credit for trying this at all, and while the end result is painfully bloated (a total runtime of 273 minutes!), it's not without its charms. But let's be honest: you should stick with the Kubrick version. Or just read the book again.
9. Lisey's Story
"Lisey's Story" has a lot going for it. It's helmed by Pablo Larraín, director of "Jackie" and "Spencer." And it boasts a cast that includes Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dane DeHaan, and Joan Allen — all of them talented. And indeed, the first episode of this eight-part series is kind of great. It's so good, in fact, that it had me thrilled at the prospect of an excellent new King adaptation when I first watched it (you can read my review right here). Sadly, it doesn't last. Larraín fails to keep the momentum going, suggesting that he should've just turned this into a feature film instead of a miniseries. Moore is the widow of a dead author who discovers that her husband could disappear into an alternate dimension called — I kid you not — "Booya Moon." It's all downhill from there.
8. Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King
"Nightmares and Dreamscapes" is an anthology miniseries, which means some of the episodes hit and some of them miss. Still, there's a fun "Twilight Zone"-like vibe to these stories, some of which are pulled from King's "Nightmares and Dreamscapes" short story collection, and others elsewhere. That said, the adaptation of "Crouch End," one of my favorite King short stories, is completely botched here, which is disheartening. The best of the bunch is "Battleground," a mostly dialogue-free episode in which William Hurt plays a hitman targeted by killer toys. Fun!
7. Storm of the Century
"Give me what I want and I'll go away!" So says Andre Linoge (Colm Feore), the malevolent figure at the center of King's mammoth miniseries "Storm of the Century." Linoge shows up on an island in the midst of a terrible storm and proceeds to turn everyone against each other — it's a set-up very similar to King's "The Mist," because King likes to plagiarize himself from time to time. Like most of these miniseries, "Storm of the Century" is too damn long, but I can distinctly remember what a big event this was when it first aired in 1999 over the course of three nights. As such, I have a soft spot for it, and I appreciate how dark the finale ultimately is. King isn't afraid to give us an unhappy ending after 257 minutes, and that takes guts.
6. Salem's Lot (2004)
The consensus on the 2004 remake of "Salem's Lot" seems to be overwhelmingly negative, but I (mostly) enjoyed this take on King's vampire tale. It's not as good as the original miniseries (we'll get to that later), but it does an effective job of capturing King's story about a small town slowly becoming overrun with bloodsuckers. The cast is solid, too. The late, great Andre Braugher is on hand as a teacher-turned-vampire hunter, and Donald Sutherland is delightfully sinister as a vampire's human familiar. Plus, you can't go wrong with casting Rutger Hauer as your head vamp.
5. 11.22.63
The only person who can stop the Kennedy assassination is ... James Franco! Look, Franco is miscast in "11.22.63" as a school teacher who goes back in time to save JFK, but the miniseries itself is quite good. It has an almost Lynchian vibe in the way it portrays sudden bursts of surreal violence, and its depiction of Lee Harvey Oswald (played by Daniel Webber) as a creepy, abusive twerp is much more accurate to history than what many conspiracy theories would have you believe. I don't see people talk about this adaptation very much, but it deserves to be rediscovered. You can currently find it streaming on Hulu if you're interested.
4. The Outsider
Author and "The Wire" writer Richard Price helped turn King's novel "The Outsider" into a pretty damn good limited series (there was some talk of a potential second season, but that seems unlikely at this point). The premise is chilling: what if there was a serial killer who could shape-shift to look like anyone — anyone at all? And what if this monster went around framing completely innocent people for horrendous crimes? Jason Bateman plays one unlucky soul who gets framed for the murder of a child, while Ben Mendelsohn is a skeptical cop who really thinks Bateman is guilty since all the evidence points to him. Cynthia Erivo shows up as private eye Holly Gibney, one of King's favorite characters. Her methods may be unusual, but she might be the one person who can crack the case. "The Outsider" admittedly runs out of steam in its final episodes, but everything leading up to that is solid and effective. And scary, too.
3. The Stand (1994)
Time for another Mick Garris joint! "The Stand" is hands-down the best King/Garris team-up, with Garris directing this mammoth miniseries that boasted more than 125 speaking roles(!). A star-studded cast brings King's apocalyptic novel to life, telling the story of the survivors of a deadly plague grappling to rebuild society while also dealing with evil supernatural forces. Some of the special effects have aged poorly, and the whole thing has a '90s gloss to it. But damn it, "The Stand" is kind of great. It's an ambitious project that really paid off, and kind of set the standard for every King miniseries to come.
2. Salem's Lot (1979)
"The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" maestro Tobe Hooper turned King's vampire novel (the second book he published) into a two-part miniseries back in 1979, and its legacy looms large. While the adaptation is mostly true to the book, Hooper and company decided to turn the book's head vampire, Barlow, into a Nosferatu clone. That may seem like a cheesy idea on paper, but it works perfectly here, and the nasty-looking creature has become iconic. That, coupled with imagery like the vampire child Ralphie Glick hovering at a bedroom window, scratching to be let in, has cemented "Salem's Lot" into a classic. There's a new "Salem's Lot" feature film on the way, but who the hell knows when we'll get to see it?
1. It
The stuff nightmares are made of. Stephen King didn't invent the idea of scary clowns, but his novel "It" and its subsequent miniseries cemented the "scary clown" trope into the pop culture consciousness. I dig the 2017 feature adaptation of "It" (the sequel ... not so much), but the 1990 miniseries helmed by Tommy Lee Wallace ("Halloween III: Season of the Witch") is still the benchmark for adapting this story. There's something off-kilter about the entire miniseries, as if we're watching a dream turning sour, curdling like milk. And while I think Bill Skarsgård turned in a great performance as Pennywise the Clown in the "It" movies, Tim Curry's take on the character is untouchable. Curry's Pennywise is both darkly funny and terrifying, and the miniseries actually suffers in its second half when he mostly fades into the background (replaced by a giant spider-monster puppet).