The Best Stephen King TV Series According To Rotten Tomatoes Was Canceled

There's no shortage of Stephen King shows on TV. The prolific horror author's works have been translated to the small screen no fewer than two dozen times across five-plus decades, beginning with Tobe Hooper's "Salem's Lot" miniseries in 1979 and spanning all the way to an upcoming "Sleeping Beauties" adaptation and Mike Flanagan's highly anticipated take on "The Dark Tower." Plenty of King shows have enjoyed celebrated runs and completed the stories their creators planned to tell, but there are a few that slipped through the cracks and were canceled too soon. Among them is "The Outsider," an utterly creepy King adaptation that got the short end of the stick when it debuted in 2020.

"The Outsider" earned rave reviews when it premiered on HBO in January of that year, but by the time its finale aired (March 8, 2020), the world had other things on its mind. The show never reached more than 2 million viewers per episode, and it was quietly canceled in November 2020. At the time, Deadline reported that production company MCR Television intended to shop the show's second season around, but a second chapter never came to fruition. Despite the star power of leads Ben Mendelsohn and Cynthia Erivo, "The Outsider" ended up dead as a doornail.

The cancellation of "The Outsider" was an undeniable bummer, especially because the show held so much promise from early on. Based on the 2018 King novel of the same name, the story kicked off with the disturbing murder of a boy who seemed to have been killed by his Little League coach. Mendelsohn's detective Ralph Anderson, dealing with lingering grief from the loss of his own son, is thrown for a loop when it turns out that the coach couldn't have killed the kid. Soon, the mystery turns supernatural, and Erivo appears as much-loved King character Holly Gibney.

"The Outsider" started off as a masterclass in uncanny, unnerving storytelling, and its dread-inducing monster was among the scariest King had crafted since the evil "IT" clown Pennywise. The show holds a strong 91% positive rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, apparently making it the highest-rated of any King TV adaptation. I was among the critics heaping praise on "The Outsider" from the start, calling it a contender for the title of "Stephen King's Modern TV Opus" in a review for Film School Rejects. This assessment — and pretty much every review from the time — was based on the limited number of episodes critics screened, and while I think "The Outsider" had a quality drop towards the end of its run, the early episodes remain terrifying and expertly crafted.

"The Outsider" was a harrowing prestige crime drama at the time when that genre was still going strong, and it subverted viewer expectations by introducing the impossible into its story. The show played with ideas of guilt and innocence, sorrow and rage, and the explainable and the inexplicable. Its lofty ideas about cycles of grief and violence were bolstered by two great performances (not to mention underrated supporting turns by Jason Bateman, Mare Winningham, Bill Camp, Yul Vasquez, and others), but in the end, it wasn't enough to convince HBO that the show should return for a second season.

The first season of the show covered the majority of King's novel, but according to Deadline, series creator Richard Price had plans beyond the end of the book. The show was sold to HBO as a series after being optioned as a miniseries, and the outlet reports that the network saw a script and story bible for a "continuation of the story beyond King's book." The author apparently gave his blessing for the season 2 storyline, which would have centered on Holly Gibney. A mid-credits scene in the season 1 finale showed Holly discover a cut on her arm similar to that of someone else who had been plagued by the show's boogeyman, indicating that she was still in danger.

Deadline says that the show's second season would've "[expanded] King's universe, exploring the human, naturalistic and inexplicable with a sustained pervasive dread you can't put your finger on." According to HBO's CEO Casey Bloys, though, the season 2 plotline just couldn't live up to what season 1 had already delivered. "We try to approach everything as if there's going to be season 2," Bloys told Entertainment Weekly, noting that "with 'The Outsider' you've got a great roadmap." But, he reasoned, "If you're going to go and do more without [the source material], you got to make really sure there's a story to tell. We just didn't feel like we landed on a story that would live up to the first season."

This decision makes sense, especially as "The Outsider" season 1 had already lost some steam in its latter episodes. The biggest loss here might be Erivo as Holly. King loves the character, and she's popped up in six novels and counting at this point, including last year's "Holly." Erivo did well in the role, and it would be great to see more of her Holly, even if it's in an entirely different TV show.