10 Most Underrated Stephen King TV Shows And Miniseries

One of the most prolific and best-selling authors in American history is Stephen King, who's written countless beloved books across a career spanning 50 years. Primarily known for his work in the horror genre, King has expanded his thematic reach to include crime, fantasy, and science fiction, sometimes under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Many of King's works have been adapted into film and television, with adaptations in the latter in both the ongoing and limited series format. And like any other author, especially one with King's prodigious output, some adaptations are going to go under-appreciated and overlooked.

Simply put, there are a multitude of Stephen King television adaptations, with many not getting their just due during their initial release. Whether overshadowed by more prominent adaptations or relegated to more audience-neglected platforms, even King's name doesn't guarantee a show's success. Fortunately, many of these series' reputations have improved over time, with subsequent audiences finally giving them the attention that they richly deserve. 

Here are the 10 most underrated Stephen King TV shows and miniseries.

Though a novel adaptation was later commissioned and published, Stephen King wrote the 1999 limited series "Storm of the Century" specifically for television. The story unfolds as a coastal Maine town is caught in the midst of a massive blizzard, with a stranger named André Linoge (Colm Feore) visiting. After murdering several residents, Linoge reveals he is aware of the community's deepest and darkest secrets and capable of supernatural powers. Linoge makes a personal demand of the town, vowing retribution if his requests are not met, leading the townspeople to debate how to deal with him.

Though it didn't garner a huge viewership during its initial broadcast run, "Storm of the Century" was well-received critically, with King regarding it as his favorite television project. King's common exploration of darker themes within small town Americana are on full display, heightened by the supernatural menace threatening the community. Filmmaker Mike Flanagan later cited the miniseries as a major inspiration behind his 2021 limited series "Midnight Mass." Revolving around a moral dilemma in the face of an unknowable evil, "Storm of the Century" is a criminally overlooked King story on television.

In the '90s, Stephen King and Steven Spielberg nearly collaborated on a haunted house horror movie, but it was ultimately shelved because of creative differences between how they saw the story. Spielberg went on to have his studio, DreamWorks Pictures, produce the 1999 remake of "The Haunting," while King reworked his story ideas into the 2002 television miniseries "Rose Red." Taking inspiration from Shirley Jackson's novel "The Haunting of Hill House," King's story has parapsychologist Joyce Reardon (Nancy Travis) lead a group of psychics to a haunted mansion in Seattle. However, as this team tries to prove the existence of the paranormal, they provoke a murderously malevolent spirit and the other ghosts haunting the premises.

Coming from the guy who wrote "The Shining," King offers a more straightforward haunted house story with "Rose Red." Very much an homage to Jackson's 1959 novel, the limited series isn't as flashy as "The Haunting" remake, seemingly by design. Instead, this ghost story relies on its ensemble cast and unsettling atmosphere to deliver its chills and supernatural stakes. More evocative and moody than outright scary, "Rose Red" is an entertaining love letter to the genre.

King's sophomore novel was 1975's "Salem's Lot," with the small Maine town of Jerusalem's Lot gradually overtaken by vampires. King named "Salem's Lot" as his personal favorite story that he's written, with the novel adapted into a television miniseries in 1979 and a long-delayed movie, finally released in 2024. What's significantly less known is that the novel was also adapted into a television miniseries in 2004, airing on TNT. This adaptation retains the broad strokes of the original story, though largely altering its framing device and climactic showdown between protagonist Ben Mears (Rob Lowe) and the vampires.

Running 25 years after the first adaptation, and on basic cable instead of network television, the 2004 "Salem's Lot" goes darker and more graphic than its predecessor. This version of the story is arguably the least scary of the three adaptations, but it does distill the foreboding atmosphere and escalating vampiric action. Lowe shines in this version, as do James Cromwell, as disgraced priest Father Callahan, and Samantha Mathis, as Mears' ill-fated love interest Susan Norton. A curious revision of King's classic story, the 2004 "Salem's Lot" is solidly put together and an interesting alternate look at this vampire tale.

Stephen King is no stranger to anthology storytelling, having published a number of short story collections and worked with filmmaker George A. Romero on the anthology horror movie "Creepshow." In 2006, King created the anthology television series "Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King," which aired for a single season on TNT. The majority of the eight-episode series are based on various short stories by King, veering into different types of terror. Bringing each standalone story to life is a solid ensemble of character actors, including William H. Macy, Ron Livingston, and Samantha Mathis.

Like virtually any anthology show, some episodes run the gamut of effectiveness, both in scary factor and overall quality. Fortunately, the series posts a generally positive average, with even the lesser episodes at least offering an intriguing premise. Among the highlights is an episode featuring a horror writer (Tom Berenger) who acquires a painting only to discover that it's cursed and seemingly indestructible. An exploration of different aspects of macabre, "Nightmares & Dreamscapes" concisely adapts King's shorter tales, with each avoiding overstaying their welcome.

King is quite a prolific crime writer, including penning an entire series of novels featuring crime-solving savant Holly Gibney. Gibney debuted in a trilogy of novels starring retired police detective Bill Hodges, with this trilogy adapted into the Audience Network series "Mr. Mercedes." Brendan Gleeson stars as Hodges, who remains haunted by an unsolved case that involved a killer using a Mercedes to kill a crowd of people. A vicious psychopath named Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway) lethally takes advantage of this in an obsessive effort to gain Hodges' attention.

Each season of "Mr. Mercedes" adapts a different novel in the Hodges trilogy, with Gleeson and Treadaway fueling the riveting cat-and-mouse game between their characters. Season 3 offers Kate Mulgrew a part like she's never had before, as a very different adversary for Hodges and his allies. For his part, King enjoyed the adaptation, but felt its original home on the Audience Network led to its low viewership and word-of-mouth. Fortunately, the show has gained a second life and wider audience, moving to Peacock after it concluded its three-season run.

There is a sense of interconnectivity throughout many of King's books, either with passing allusions to past work, recurring characters, or the shared fantasy epic "The Dark Tower." The Hulu original series "Castle Rock" created its own shared television universe based on different works by King. Set in the fictional Maine community that appears across several King stories, the series weaves in several prominent elements from various novels as it builds its own unsettling small town tale. Characters include a mysterious inmate ("IT" star Bill Skarsgård) from Shawshank State Penitentiary, a niece (Jane Levy) of "The Shining" character Jack Torrance, and "Misery" villain Annie Wilkes (Lizzy Caplan).

"Castle Rock" isn't a direct King adaptation, per se, but his storytelling sensibilities permeate throughout the series and much more than just the multitude of nods to his books. There are creepy mysteries and dark secrets festering under the surface in Castle Rock, with the show matching King's penchant for a mounting sense of dread and small town intrigue. Surprisingly complex and unfailingly unsettling, the series is more about capturing the spirit and mood of King, remixing familiar elements together. A unique spin on approaching King's vast body of work, "Castle Rock" is a tightly crafted pastiche celebrating the author's enduring legacy.

While the character of Holly Gibney appears throughout "Mr. Mercedes," as she does in the novels, a standalone version of the character appears in the HBO series "The Outsider." Played by Cynthia Erivo, Gibney assists in the investigation of a gruesome child murder in Georgia that rocks the entire community. As disturbing circumstances around the murder expand and escalate, it becomes clear that something more is at play than a child killer. Moreover, this paranormal threat is by no means confined to the small Georgia town where it claimed its latest prey.

Whereas "Mr. Mercedes" was, more or less, a straight-laced crime thriller, "The Outsider" leans into overt supernatural horror as it progresses. This development is as deliberately paced as the overall story, growing more unsettling in the back half of its 10-episode run. Starting out as a seemingly normal crime procedural, the show goes darker and scarier, diving deeper into the more sinister potential of its premise than the novel. Despite its critical acclaim, HBO opted not to continue "The Outsider," a decision that King himself disagreed with, making the series a one-season wonder.

One of the most well-regarded King novels is "The Stand," a post-apocalyptic story that saw a virulent contagion wiping out the majority of humanity in a matter of weeks. As the survivors band together and try to rebuild some semblance of civilization, the sinister Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård) leads a community of malcontents in Las Vegas. These two factions inevitably erupt into a bloody conflict to determine the fate of the recovering world. "The Stand" was adapted into a limited series in 2020 on CBS All Access, shortly before the service was rebranded as Paramount+.

In addition to being compared to King's novel, the 2020 version of "The Stand" also stood in the shadow of the preceding 1994 miniseries adaptation. The '90s iteration was critically acclaimed, winning two Emmy Awards, and influenced filmmaker Mike Flanagan, who helmed several King adaptations himself decades later. However, 2020 miniseries is a solid retelling on its own merits, boasting an all-star cast and an original epilogue written by King himself. Both a faithful adaptation and subtle modernization of King's sweeping saga, the 2020 "The Stand" lives up to its source material's ambition.

Another novel King has cited among his favorites is 2006's "Lisey's Story," which was adapted into a limited series by Apple TV+ in 2021, with King scripting the series. Julianne Moore stars as Lisey Landon, the widow of renowned author Scott Landon (Clive Owen), who secretly possessed supernatural abilities. As Lisey mourns the loss of her husband, she has to contend with intrusive parties trying to obtain Scott's unpublished manuscripts. This includes an increasingly disturbing stalker, Jim Dooley (Dane DeHaan), who is determined for the world to see the full breadth of Scott's work.

In adapting his own story to the screen, King perhaps leaves too much of the original text in the adaptation, visibly affecting it pacing. It's always odd criticizing an adaptation of being too faithful to the source material, but that feels like the case here, though there are noticeable differences from the novel too. Pacing issues in translating the story aside, "Lisey's Story" is powered by the undeniable acting talents of Moore and Owen, even if the show gets carried away with flashbacks. Lushly realized with an all-star ensemble cast, "Lisey's Story" overcomes its faults to bring King's beloved story to television.

After the success of "Salem's Lot," King has revisited the vampire-infested New England town in multiple subsequent stories. Among these is the standalone prequel "Jerusalem's Lot," one of King's many short stories, published in the 1978 anthology "Night Shift." The story was adapted into the 2021 Epix series "Chapelwaite," named after a foreboding estate in 19th century Maine. Widowed whaler Charles Boone (Adrien Brody) moves with his children into their ancestral New England home, only to learn about the undead secret behind his family and the town.

With its dimly lit interiors and desolate landscapes, "Chapelwaite" really evokes the gloomy New England atmosphere that the story requires. Brody is consistently great at playing haunted characters, with Boone a shell of himself even before he encounters the supernatural threat targeting his family. Like "Mr. Mercedes," "Chapelwaite" didn't receive as high a profile on Epix as it would have on a more popular platform. Though a second season was initially planned, these plans were quietly shelved, leaving the adaptation as the single-season limited series it was originally marketed as.