Nightmares and Dreamscapes (from the stories of Stephen King) on TNT

When you hear that any Stephen King story is being made into a tv movie, it's natural to think to yourself, "Oh god, how are they going to ruin it now?" And usually, you find that it's the same old combination of a low budget and bad director. However, if you've been watching this mini-series of one-hour episodes from the book of the same name, you know that strangely enough, they actually did a good job this time. If I'm not mistaken, every episode has had a different director and they've had different casts. And they've had a decent budget. I've been really impressed and I thought that all the episodes thus far were really good. I'd watch them again and I hope they come out with a dvd soon. So far, "The End of the Whole Mess" has been my favorite, but I think all of them have been good. Not only that, but the shows have been really faithful to the written stories. I still remember them, and a lot of the dramatic points in "The Road Virus Heads North" were recreated in the show.

Suffice it to say, I'm happy so far and that's a really strange occurence in general with King on tv. He has had some successes. I mean, the Dead Zone has been a real success, but a lot of the tv movies just sucked. "It" was passable, but "The Tommyknockers" was just ridiculously bad. I mean, it wasn't that great a book either, but still. And "The Langoliers", while having its moments disappointed me too. I can only hope that when someone decides to do The Gunslinger series, they make a commitment to doing it well. If that one goes bad, I'll have to hurt somebody.