Stephen King Says This Underrated Vampire TV Show Is Based On An Even Better Book

At this point, Stephen King is as prolific a recommender of TV shows and movies as he is an author. King only just delivered a glowing review of the underseen Apple TV series "Last Seen" which followed his endorsement of Netflix horror miniseries "My Sad Dead." Now, he's back with yet another dispatch from his travels in the streaming sphere. According to the writer, the supernatural horror drama "NOS4A2" is well worth a watch, but he would say that since it's based on a book written by his son.

King's latest rec comes via his Threads account, where he anticipated responses from those who might claim he had a biased opinion.

As King sees it, "NOS4A2" is a "cool TV series" but it's the book to which we should all be paying close attention. The "incredibly tense & scary" novel of the same name was first published by his son, Joe Hill, back in 2013. The writer's third novel follows a woman with a supernatural gift who becomes the target of a similarly supernatural killer who feeds on the souls of children. In King's view, the novel is well worth a read regardless of his relationship to its author. But the TV show received solid reviews and is arguably underrated, too.

Joe Hill's "NOS4A2" tells the story of Victoria "Vic" McQueen, a young girl with the ability to find lost things by riding her bike through a covered bridge that transports her to the location of the misplaced items. As a teenager, Vic is abducted by Charles "Charlie" Talent Manx, who drives a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with a "NOS4A2" vanity plate. He uses the car to whisk children away to a nightmarish nether world called "Christmasland," turning the kids into hollow husks drained of their soul on the way. Luckily, Vic manages to escape, but remains forever haunted by her run-in with Manx. When the supernatural killer returns later in Vic's life he has a new target: her son.

"NOS4A2" is noteworthy for being connected to Stephen King's work. In a 2014 Writer's Digest interview, Hill said, "In some ways, 'NOS4A2' is a book about Stephen King novels. It is a kind of response to my dad's book 'It,' which I loved as a kid." Indeed, the AV Club, which listed "NOS4A2" as one of the best books of 2013, claimed the novel "reads like an 'It'-era book by his father." King repaid the compliment with his novel "Doctor Sleep," in which Dick Hallorann mentions Charlie Manx. 

Slant Magazine called "NOS4A2" a "relentless, profoundly disturbing monster of a book" and while The Guardian's Jeff VanderMeer wasn't entirely convinced, he did praise the "nostalgic homage to the horror doorstoppers of the late 80s" for doing escapism well. By this point in his career Hill had already seen his book "Horns" adapted into a movie starring Daniel Radcliffe, which wasn't exactly a critical triumph. When AMC decided to adapt "NOS4A2" for TV, then, he surely hoped for a better reception.

"NOS4A2" debuted on AMC in June 2019. It was created for TV by Jami O'Brien, who previously worked on other AMC series "Fear the Walking Dead" and "Hell on Wheels." Typically, using the term "created by" in relation to an adaptation feels a little off, but in this case O'Brien and the writers changed enough about the original story that it's probably apt.

Season 1 of "NOS4A2" in particular is vastly different to the novel. Instead of picking things up when Victoria McQueen (played in the show by Ashleigh Cummings) is eight years old, the show follows a teenage version of the character who, as well as discovering her supernatural ability to essentially teleport via a covered bridge, also has all the problems of a regular teenager, including boy trouble. As such, there's a big YA element to the show that wasn't present in the book. Charlie Manx is played by Zachary Quinto while Ebon Moss-Bachrach of "The Bear" and "Fantastic Four" fame plays Vic's dad Christopher McQueen.

AMC released two seasons of "NOS4A2" before pulling the plug in 2020, by which point Season 1 had earned a not terrible 69% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. Season 2 bumped that up to 72%. /Film's Vanessa Armstrong even called "NOS4A2" a smart and creepy take on Joe Hill's novel. At the very least, then, Hill didn't have to witness another adaptation being eviscerated by critics. Plus, the show had managed to complete the narrative from Hill's original novel by the time it was cancelled. Several streaming services have "NOS4A2" available to watch for free, including PlutoTV and Philo. But Stephen King would rather you read the book.