Ranking King's Television Adaptations


We love to rank Stephen King's works, don't we?  Which is the "best" novel?  (The Stand)  Which is the worst?  What's the top ten best short stories?  And so on.  Stephen Spignesi wrote an entire book ranking the work of Stephen King.  In the end, it's all pretty subjective.

vulture.com posted an article, "All of Stephen King’s TV Work, Ranked." Gilbert Cruz explained,
Dome also presented Vulture with the perfect opportunity to follow up on last spring’s ranking of all 62 Stephen King books; to come up with this definitive second countdown, we spent countless hours watching and rewatching the many episodes, shows, movies, and miniseries produced from his novels and stories, as well as a few things he wrote directly for the small screen.
Again, my favorite comments comes from the stinkers! Get this from Trucks, " Starring Timothy Busfield and a musical score that at several points sounds like the work of an intermediate piano student who’d just bought his first keytar, this two-hour movie about trucks that come to life and attack humans should make us all apologize to Maximum Overdrive for having ever called it such terrible names (at least that cheesefest had the good humor to give one of its trucks a memorable Green Goblin face). The King-like lesson to be learned here? There is always something worse."

Receiving a respectably high rating on the list was the 2002 television version of Carrie, which made it to #10.  Cruz notes, "Patricia Clarkson does a more frigid, less campy take on Carrie’s mother, and Angela Bettis comes closer to the homely-looking, beaten-down Carrie White of King’s original conception. Not as stylized as De Palma’s and not as expensive as this fall’s version is likely to be, Carrie nonetheless gets right to the core of the story."

Here is the top 10 from the list:
10. Carrie
9. The Twilight Zone: “Gramma”
8. Salem’s Lot — 1979
7. Nightmares and Dreamscapes
6. Kingdom Hospital
5. The Dead Zone
4. Salem’s Lot
3. Storm of the Century
2. The Stand
1. It

What would make your  top 5  for Stephen King TV ?

Mine:
5. The Tommyknockers
4. 2002 Carrie
3. 1979 Salem's Lot
2. IT
1. The Stand

-- ? -- Under The Dome.

1 comment:

  1. 5: Nightmares and Dreamscapes
    4: 'Salem's Lot (1979)
    3: The Stand
    2: Storm of the Century
    1: IT

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