This Stephen King Time Travel Miniseries From J. J. Abrams Is A Must-Watch On Netflix

These days, we're used to streaming services drawing attention for their new original movies and series, with Netflix being no exception. Their recent drop of the fifth season of "Stranger Things" has been a massive success, viewership-wise. It's important to remember, however, that the appeal of services like Netflix is not just seeing whatever the latest movie or series they've produced, but to see other things that they have made newly available, especially stuff you may have missed the first time around. For the most part, big movies and popular, long-running TV shows are always going to be in the pop culture conversation, and thus, there will likely be a place to catch them. Yet the more one-off projects run the risk of being forgotten, especially something like a limited series.

That's why I wanted to highlight the news that, amongst the group of new films and shows available on Netflix this month, is a limited series which I absolutely love: "11.22.63," which ran for 8 episodes as a Hulu exclusive back in 2016. The series is an adaptation of the 2011 Stephen King novel of the same name, and was developed by showrunner Bridget Carpenter. J.J. Abrams (who's currently working on the Glen Powell-starring "The Great Beyond") and his Bad Robot company produced. As the title suggests, the premise involves a modern-day school teacher, Jake Epping (James Franco), desperately seeking to try and prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy after a friend reveals that a time portal to 1960 exists in their small Maine town. 

The miniseries works both as one extended, serialized story as well as an episodic experience. It feels like an encapsulation of the sorts of stories that King excels at: there's speculative sci-fi, heartfelt romance, and mysterious supernatural occurrences all in the same show, and this alone makes it a must-watch.

That main hook of "11.22.63" is the engine that powers all eight episodes of the miniseries, and it's a pretty effective one. King's concept is of time being its own measurable force of nature, something which "pushes back" against Jake and his quest to change things. As such, the series has the feeling of something like a heist or mission movie (or, more aptly, a mirror image of the "Back to the Future" films) combined with a supernatural thriller, as time itself works against Jake in the shadows. There's a more explicit antagonist in the form of the Yellow Card Man (Kevin K. O'Connor), as well as the deliciously drawn-out drama involving Lee Harvey Oswald (Daniel Webber) as he is alternatively pushed toward and pulled away from his destiny. There's even a fascinating thread involving the supporting character of Bill Turcotte (an excellent George MacKay), someone who joins Jake on his quest whose involvement may or may not be foretold.

In addition to all the time-travel shenanigans and ticking-clock drama, "11.22.63" features a gloriously heart-wrenching romance between Jake and a Texas librarian, Sadie Dunhill (Sarah Gadon). Though folks may not wish to watch the series due to Franco's real-life allegations, his work in the show is some of the best he ever done, and that's due in large part to the star-crossed romance he has with Gadon's Sadie. The most major theme of the series involves how complex everything can become when an interloper from the future travels to the past, and thus the romance plot becomes such a central element of the series rather than anything tacked-on or obligatory. Overall, "11.22.63" is a fantastic example of how a format like a miniseries can be best used, telling a story that feels robust and complete. Hopefully, its Netflix debut will allow more people to discover it.