The Kind Of Television Suited For King

Simple Point: I wish there was a "Twilight Zone" like series featuring Stephen King's work.

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In the previous post I linked to Stephanie Earp's article, "Can Stephen King Work on TV?"

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I think King can work on TV. Of course, I'm excited about Haven. When it comes to television, I liked Nightmares and Dreamscapes. I'll review the 8 episodes another time, but here's why I like it; Short stories with a punch are one of the things constant readers have come to expect from King. In fact, every few years King gives us a book full of wonderful stories -- Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Everything Eventual, Just After Sunset.

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The format where you did short stories on television seems to be slipping away. I loved the Twilight Zone. It was written -- for the most part -- by three authors; Rod Serling, Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont (the Twilight Zone's Richard Bachman!). While it was always Serling's show, the output was so enormous it took a creative writing team to make it happen.

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I wish we could have a Stephen King version of the Twilight Zone. Strange music, an introduction from Uncle Steve and a great story with a neck breaking twist at the end.

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They tried a remake of the Twilight Zone in the 80's. We all know how that went. And to be clear, I'm not saying King should do the Twilight Zone. However, the series had a format that would work for King's material.

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What made the Twilight Zone successful? A lot of things, but one important factor was Serling himself. Serling had immense control over the Twilight Zone! It was His show. You can read the behind the scenes story in Marc Zicree's The Twilight Zone Companion, but the bottom line is that it was Serling's gig. He sold it, he wrote for it, he often re-wrote the scripts, and he introduced each episode. He became the face of the Twilight Zone.

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There were Others!

Of course, there was the Outer Limits and Science Fiction Theater -- but they weren't built on a single person.

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The Master of Suspense -- director of Psycho and The Birds -- had Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Lots of fun! Can any of us forget those opening lines, "Good evening." We knew it would not be a good evening for someone on Mr. Hitchcock's show! This series was so good, they remade it.

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I also remember enjoying Ray Bradbury's Theater as a kid. I mention those because they are both based on a single person (in this case, respectively, a director and a writer). More recently we've had Tales from the Crypt, which King has written for, and each episode was introduced by the ghoulish Crypt keeper. I liked it! George Romero produced Tales from the Darkside.

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The forced time frame is also nice for short stories. Often King's work is actually hurt by cinema's need to flesh it out beyond the walls King created it in. You know, the best Twilight Zone's were the 30 minute ones. Season Four,w hen they went to an hour, stunk up bad! In fact, I can't think of a single episode from season four that was really wonderful.

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Still Waiting For Radio

Don't you miss old radio? I wasn't around for it! My wife said I was born an old man. Go figure. But I've said before that King's work would really work best on radio since it is the Theater Of The Mind! And it's been done. BBC gave us a faithful adaptation of Pet Semetary.

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Maybe some day they'll give us: Uncle Steve's Dark Kingdom.