Every Stephen King TV Show, Ranked Worst to Best

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – June 3, 2021

Originally a reluctant convert to television, best-selling horror author Stephen King has seen over two dozen projects bearing his name reach the small screen over the past 40+ years, from Salem's Lot to the just-launched Lisey's Story. While most of these have been adaptations of King's novels and stories, a few were wholly new projects written by the author directly for TV. Some have been deeply mediocre at best, but quite a few of King's TV shows have received a warm welcome from critics.

In the gallery on this page, we rank every Stephen King series from worst to best by Metascore, reflecting the critical consensus at the time of each show's debut. Miniseries are included alongside conventional TV shows, but made-for-TV movies are excluded.

10 of 26 photo by ABC

59 The Langoliers (ABC, 1995)

Based on "The Langoliers" from the anthology Four Past Midnight (1990)

[#16] The fourth and perhaps least ambitious of ABC's Stephen King adaptations in the 1990s, this two-part miniseries was based on the novella of the same name in King's four-story collection released five years prior. Written and directed by horror veteran Tom Holland (Fright Night, Child's Play), The Langoliers traces the strange events on a commercial red-eye flight from L.A. to Boston, during which every passenger who didn't fall asleep vanished mid-flight. Things only get stranger after the plane manages to land (in Maine, naturally)—and only partially because of the unintentionally hilarious special effects. But Dean Stockwell, Patricia Wettig, and David Morse are among the cast members whose committed performances help elevate the miniseries slightly above MST3K material. Bronson Pinchot also stars.

“What really destroys 'The Langoliers,' though, is when the langoliers finally appear, looking and acting like a pack of crazed, oversize Pac-Men. Their evil intention is to literally chew the scenery, but Pinchot has already beaten them to it and the special effects are more laughable than terrifying, as if the dinosaurs in 'Jurassic Park,' after all that buildup, had looked like big Barneys. Until that point, 'The Langoliers' is fun but that's not quite enough.” —David Bianculli, New York Daily News

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