Apple TV Is Streaming An Underrated Stephen King Miniseries Hardcore Fans Have To Watch

Both the TV show and original book version of Stephen King's "Lisey's Story" have remained under the radar. The novel was published in 2006, firmly after King's supposed golden era was over and shortly before the King Renaissance (starting with "11/22/63" in 2011) took full swing. "Lisey's Story" itself rarely shows up in people's lists of King's best-ever books, which is why it's not too surprising that the TV adaptation rarely receives much praise either.

The Apple TV series "Lisey's Story," starring Julianne Moore as grieving widow Lisey and Clive Owen as her deceased husband Scott, released in June 2021 to mixed reactions. The miniseries has a 53% score among critics on Rotten Tomatoes and a 48% among regular viewers.

Lucy Mangan at The Guardian wrote in her review, "Add a relentlessly repetitive narrative structure, and the show is left with precious little space to let dread build, to make the scary things scary and the emotional things moving." In his own review for /Film, Joshua Meyer wrote, "There's enough story here to justify maybe four or six episodes, not eight."

But "Lisey's Story," which is still streaming on Apple TV, is definitely worth a Stephen King fan's time. It's a faithful adaptation of one of King's most personal books, with a script that King himself helped write. "The trailer for LISEY'S STORY drops tomorrow," he wrote on Twitter in May 2021. "I love it, and hope you all do."

In a 2019 Guardian interview, King was asked which three books of his he'd save in a fire. He answered, "Dumb question, but I'll play. 'Lisey's Story,' 'The Stand,' and 'Misery.'" The latter two books were easy to understand, as those were clear-cut hits that even non-King fans can appreciate. It was only "Lisey's Story" that shocked some people, although it didn't surprise the hardcore fans who know King best. The book is not-so-secretly a love letter to his wife Tabitha, a woman who has stood by him for 50 years and counting.

The parallels between Lisey and Tabitha are clear: They're both the wives of a famous author, with the main difference being that Lisey's writer husband has already died. King explained in the Q&A section at the end of the book that the inspiration for it came from a real-life experience he had — one that encouraged him to think about his death and the effect it might have on his loved ones:

"I had double pneumonia around the year 2000 and came really close to stepping out. When I came home from the hospital, my wife had cleaned out my study completely. She wanted to repaint it and redecorate it, or something like that, and when I went in, she said, 'Don't go in there! You won't like what you find!' So, of course I went in there [laughs], and it was empty. All the books were gone. ... I thought to myself, 'I've died. I'm a ghost.' I really, for a minute, thought that; 'I'm haunting my old study, and this is what it looks like.' The idea for 'Lisey's Story' came from that and from wondering how my wife would act without me."