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Pennywise is back, baby, and pop culture’s favorite freaky clown is going back in time to kill the kids of Derry, Maine, in 1962, with future seasons (should they materialize) visiting other time periods. If my hometown saw mass slaughterings of children every generation or so, I might be tempted to pick up stakes and head on out—but the Stephen King IP train must keep rolling, and so here we are.
So far, the show isn’t hitting the heights of previous It adaptations, but it’s shown an admirable willingness to shock—the opening scene includes an impressively graphic and rather unconventional birthing sequence, and the show has quickly made clear that no characters are safe from the dark deeds of Pennywise. While you’re waiting for new episodes to drop, you might enjoy these other horror series (including other King adaptations) that hit some of the same notes.
Castle Rock (2018 – 2019)
Castle Rock, canceled after two (rather excellent) seasons, was a victim of failed marketing. The show was promoted as a dive into some kind of Stephen King connected universe, promising Easter eggs without suggesting much by way of storytelling. And yet! There are actual stories here, with real dramatic heft—the first season’s “The Queen,” told from the unstable perspective of a character (played by Sissy Spacek) with worsening dementia, was one of the best, and most existentially horrifying, things on television that year. The second season introduces young Annie Wilkes, (Lizzy Caplan), the Kathy Bates character we know from Misery. The cast across the two seasons is stellar, and includes Bill Skarsgård, a creepy character not named Pennywise. There’s plenty of stuff for King fans to sink their teeth into as we dive into the backstory of a different Stephen King town, but it all works rather well on its own, as well. Stream Castle Rock on Hulu.
Talamasca: The Secret Order (2025 – )
The third series in what AMC is calling its Immortal Universe of shows based on the works of Anne Rice, this one stars Nicholas Denton as Guy Anatole, a new recruit to the title organization of supernatural spies and watchers, William Fichtner as a vampire making a play for control of the organization, all while Downton Abbey‘s Elizabeth McGovern brings us yet another delightfully confusing accent playing the leader of the Talamasca’s New York motherhouse. The show is impressively spry and lively—a bit of a surprise, given the heavy emo vibes of Interview with the Vampire and The Mayfair Witches. We’re only a couple of episodes in, but the show kicks off with a rather brutal dismembering in the style of It. Stream Talamasca on AMC+.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023 – )
This is more of an action thriller than a gloopy It-style horror show, but the shows still have a couple of things in common. First, they both provide previously uncharted backstories for popular film properties; second, they’re both full of monsters. Monarch does a surprisingly effective job of telling its own story within the universe of all the American Godzilla movies of the past decade or so, bringing the bigger stories back down to Earth while building out an entire decades-long monster-verse mythology in the process. Anna Sawai stars as a young teacher searching for her father, missing since Godzilla’s attack on San Francisco (depicted in the 2014 film), and who finds herself drawn into the past and present of a secret government agency. Wyatt and Kurt Russell play the past and present incarnations of the Army colonel who helped set the whole thing in motion way back in 1959. Stream Monarch on Apple TV+.
Dark (2017 – 2020)
Dark began as a mystery involving a missing child and evolved, over its three seasons, into a wildly complex narrative: a time travel-driven story that explores dark family secrets over the course of several generations. If it’s not quite as bloody as Welcome to Derry, it shares with that show a willingness to put kids and teens through the wringer. Youth may be a sort of protection in some horror stories, but not here—not even a little tiny bit. The German import has a striking look and incredibly atmospheric feel, with an ensemble cast of teens and adults whose narratives are deftly intertwined across decades in a story that starts when a child goes missing (one of the least bad things that happens to the people of fictional Winden, Germany). Stream Dark on Netflix.
The Outsider (2020)
The premise here is brutal, and, to the everyone in the narrative, impossible: A kid is horrifically murdered (even Pennywise might be shocked), and the evidence decisively points to Little League coach Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman). It’s an open-and-shut case—except that he was out of town at a conference while the murder was occurring, and even appeared on the news in another town. The tragedies pile up, and the threat isn’t entirely natural. Without giving too much away, it’s among the most disturbing of King adaptations (it’s also incredibly engaging). There are great performances here from Bateman, as well as from Ben Mendelsohn and Cynthia Erivo as Holly Gibney, one of King’s recurring characters. HBO declined to renew the show, but it adapts the entire book and ends fairly decisively. Stream The Outsider on HBO Max.
Channel Zero (2016 – 2018)
A mind-bending and occasionally gruesome expansion of various online creepypastas, Nick Antosca’s series takes the form of four season-long storylines. While the tone is far from juvenile, the vibe here is childhood-nightmares-come-to-life: The show’s first season anticipates I Saw the TV Glow with a story about a half-remembered TV series linked to the disappearances of several children; the second sees a group of friends trapped in a tourist-attraction haunted house that exits into a disturbing alternate reality. It’s all smart and genuinely freaky, existential dread blending with memorable visuals such as a child made entirely of human teeth. Stream Channel Zero on Shudder.
Lovecraft Country (2020)
A Black family sets off on a road trip across Jim Crow America. Matt Ruff’s novel, on which the show is based, is one of a handful of impressive books written over the past decade or so that attempt to reconcile the unabashedly racist outlook of horror writer H. P. Lovecraft with the power and appeal of his creations, and so the series unearths some of the darkest terrors of 20th century America, and places them alongside, and inside, a Lovecraftian universe of elder gods and dark dimensions. Much of ’50s period horror, like It, relies on a twisted white suburbia as a setting, while Lovecraft Country turns that on its head—none of these characters is surprised to learn that there’s darkness at the heart of the mid-century American dream. The great Michael K. Williams appears here in one of his final performances. Stream Lovecraft Country on HBO Max.
The Mist (2017)
While its extended runtime robs this TV version of The Mist of some of the punch and immediacy of the film version, it nevertheless nails a “hell is other people” vibe with which I can’t argue. The setup is basically the same, though the setting now encompasses an entire town: A mysterious mist surrounds the town of Bridgeville, Maine, and the near-impenetrable fog contains various gloopy and vicious Lovecraftian horrors. Some people respond with courage, but most are focused on saving themselves, while others approach the danger with extremely unhelpful religious mania of the kind that does more harm than even the monsters. Afew hours with these people and I’d take my chances outside. The Gilded Age‘s Morgan Spector leads the cast. Purchase The Mist on Apple TV+ and Prime Video.
Them (2021 – 2024)
Starting off in the 1950s, Them takes a stab at The Second Great Migration, when millions of Black people left the South for northern cities and suburbs; seeking opportunity and escaping overt racism in favor of slightly more veiled racism. The Emory family (led by Deborah Ayorinde and Ashley Thomas) move from North Carolina to an all-white neighborhood in East Compton, each family member eventually haunted by a different ghost. The smiling white faces concealing vicious intent are far more frightening than any specters. The second, and final, season moves forward to LA of 1991, much as Welcome to Derry promises time jumps in future seasons, should they materialize. Stream Them on Prime Video.
The Midnight Club (2022)
The Midnight Club, based on a few different YA Christopher Pike novels, involves a group of eight terminally ill young patients at a bucolic hospice home run by a secretive and mysterious doctor (A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Heather Langenkamp). Each night the kids meet secretly to share scary stories, with each also promising to return from beyond the grave when their time comes. It’s spooky and often moving without ever being schmaltzy or precious—and, while the tone is a bit more ruminative than in Welcome to Derry, it shares with the more recent series a willingness to put these kids through it. The show was planned as more than a miniseries, so the cancellation leaves several questions unanswered—but that works OK in terms of the show’s overall tone, which had to do with unanswerable mysteries about life and death. Stream Midnight Mass on Netflix.
From (2022 – )
For residents of The Town (we never get a name), the feeling of being trapped in your small hometown is literal: Once you set foot there, you can never leave. Oh, and did I mention that creatures come from the woods and kill anyone found outside after dark? Doesn’t sound quite as bad as the town where I grew up, but nevertheless: concerning. In the first couple of episodes, the Matthews family learn all about this firsthand when they roll into town in their RV and find themselves trapped alongside the local sheriff (Harold Perrineau)—and it’s getting dark. The show’s monsters aren’t just mindlessly hungry, they’re cunning and sadistic, and more than capable of killing residents in impressively gory ways. Stream From on MGM+.
Haven (2010 – 2015)
Another Stephen King adaptation that takes the source material and runs away with it, this one comes from the short mystery novel The Colorado Kid. Emily Rose stars as Audrey Parker, an FBI Special Agent sent to the titular small town of Haven, Maine on a routine case, and who gets drawn into “The Troubles,” a series of harmful and often violent supernatural events that have recurred throughout the town’s history. A supernatural-case-of-the-week format gives way to a bigger mystery when Audrey comes to learn that this isn’t her first time in Haven, nor the first time she’s encountered the Troubles, even if she doesn’t have much memory of her time there. While mostly set in the present, the show masters the “small towns are weird” vibe at which King excels. Stream Haven on Tubi, Peacock, and Prime Video.
Feria: The Darkest Light (2022)
Dark deeds and supernatural forces from the past haunt multiple generations—this time, in 1995 Andalusia. This import finds teenage sisters Sofia and Eva caught in a nightmare when their parents go missing while being implicated in a cult ritual that’s left 23 people dead, including a woman who’d been missing for years. Tying back to 1975 and, implicitly, the fall of Francisco Franco, Feria shatters this small town’s sense of community and security while calling into question the value of the organizations—including government and church—that everyone holds dear. Kids getting caught up in generational cycles of violence and shame is an extremely recognizable vibe. Stream Feria on Netflix.
