A sexual assault storyline that begins in the pilot is woefully mishandled during a lengthy mystery subplot. The secondary characters at the mall, barely given names or discernible personalities, devolve so fast into a braying mob out for blood that it’s like reading a copy of Lord Of The Flies where the middle pages are all stuck together.Īs the show progresses, it resorts to increasingly cheap devices to shove the plot along. She’s head and shoulders above the rest of the cast and consistently fascinating even when saying preposterous things. Questions of faith and ethics are handled with all the subtlety of a giant tentacled beast, but credit must go to Conroy, whose character is sheltering in the church, for keeping most of these debates watchable. Unfortunately, there’s a real clunky element to the way these anxieties are included and it never really goes away as the series progresses. It’s a clever idea and the change in how the mist works well thematically for it. Showrunner Christian Torpe positions this town as a microcosm of the wider United States, where small-town anxieties feed into ongoing political and social debates. Though it feels forced, the pilot depicts Bridgeville as a place with skeletons in closets all over the place.

It’s an effective shift and one which capitalises on the themes established in The Mist’s first episode. Gone too are the various monsters that Thomas Jane and gang had to deal with in favour of something more personal and specific to the individual residents of the town. Previous versions kept the characters confined to the supermarket – save for escape attempts and foraging missions – whereas here, the series splits out its main cast into three groups: a large collection of residents at the mall and two smaller groups at the police station and the church respectively. They are largely unrelated to King’s original tale (though keep an eye out for a Mrs Carmody in a wry nod to the novella and film’s scary preacher lady). Amongst the rest are Frances Conroy as local environmentalist and conspiracy nut Nathalie Raven, Danica Curcic’s junkie Mia, and amnesiac soldier Bryan, played by Okezie Morro. Set in Bridgeville, Maine and with a whole host of new characters, including Morgan Spector as Kevin Copeland, Alyssa Sutherland as his wife Eve, and their daughter Alex, played by Gus Birney, who function as the central figures in the larger ensemble. The television series offers a chance to explore this premise further, given more time to expand its narrative, the mystery of where the mist came from, and how the characters deal with the situation.

King the mist