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.

3 of 26 photo by Apple

48 Lisey's Story (Apple TV+, 2021)

Based on the novel Lisey's Story (2006)

[tied for #21] The newest Stephen King series (at least until Chapelwaite debuts on Epix later this summer), Lisey's Story finds King adapting his own 2006 novel into an eight-episode Apple miniseries produced by J.J. Abrams and directed by Pablo Larraín (Jackie). Julianne Moore heads the cast as Lisey, a woman who begins to discover some rather interesting things about her late husband (a famous author, played in flashbacks by Clive Owen) two years after his death. Joan Allen, Ron Cephas Jones, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sung Kang, and Dane DeHaan also star. Critics feel that the concept works better on the page than on screen (where the story plays both convoluted and overwrought), though they do admire the performances on display in the series.

“There’s much here that works well: What is meant to be scary is scary, what is meant to touch the heart will. And Moore, always good at playing women trying to project calm, is in fine form. But viewers may wonder what it all adds up to, why this unblinking look at one woman’s hard time also had so much extra, often outlandish stuff that didn’t quite pay off.” —Daniel D'Addario, Variety

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