Stephen King's The Stand comes to TV once again. But does it deliver?

The Stand ★★★
Amazon Prime Video, on demand

Stephen King’s The Stand is one of his finest novels. From the pen of the so-called master of horror, that’s a grand compliment. At the same time, it is one of his most dense, both in terms of storyline and character population. It is a lesson that something can be both excellent and unwieldy at the same time.

It was adapted for television in 1994, rather successfully, given that many King adaptations for the screen often come off as a patchwork of positives and negatives.

Odessa Young, Greg Kinnear and James Marsden in The Stand.Credit: Robert Falconer/CBS

In some cases that is because the story elements present challenges to how they are rendered on screen. In other cases it falls back to the inescapable truth that even though King himself is brilliant, and his collection of writing breathtaking, he has a peculiar tendency to bungle endings. They seem to fall short more often than not.

It was something of a television industry no-brainer to adapt The Stand once again, in part because it is a compelling story, but also because in the year of the pandemic, revisiting the question of what is left behind when the world is ravaged by a runaway plague would seem obvious.

But it also begs from the audience a willingness to switch from a news channel filled with stories about pandemics, global disasters and death and desperate survival, to a piece of escapist entertainment about those same things. It’s not everyone’s idea of a fun night in.

Still, if the number one most requested film on cruise liner cinemas really is Titanic, then human beings don’t make much sense either.

Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abigail in The Stand.Credit: Robert Falconer/CBS

In this television iteration of The Stand, the world is ravaged by a plague virus and the stage is set for a showdown between good and evil. On one side is the heroic Stu Redman (James Marsden) and on the other the sinister Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgard), and seemingly between them the gentle and wise Mother Abagail (Whoopi Goldberg).

This version is longer than the previous adaptation – nine hours here, compared to six in the 1994 version – and it’s fair to say that the narrative does not benefit from the extra air. There is space to graft new layers onto character and story detail, but overall the longer run feels like it has the effect of slowing down the story.

In a move intended to combat that, perhaps, this adaptation begins in the middle and tells the beginning of the story in flashback. The 1994 mini-series opened with a dramatic punch. It’s hard, having only seen the first few episodes, to know whose line call was the better one, but just a few hours in it feels like 1994 made the smarter move.

But this was commissioned for the streaming service CBS All Access – the 1994 mini-series aired on a free-to-air network – which means there is a more confronting visual narrative available. Not to mention the fact that production values in the span of 26-odd years have increased exponentially. This is without doubt, in visual and production terms, the superior adaptation.

Jovan Adepo as Larry Underwood and James Marsden as Stu Redman in The Stand.Credit: Robert Falconer/CBS

So why then does it feel like wading though concrete? Just a few episodes in and there’s a crowd of directors including Josh Boone (who co-wrote the first few episodes), Tucker Gates, Danielle Krudy and Bridget Savage Cole. In contrast, the original had a single director – Mick Garris – and King himself wrote the scripts.

Nine hours is also a long time sign on for a dud ending. Which is not to say we will get one – the final episodes are still unseen – but some of us are old enough to remember the original adaptation of It, and the mini-series Rose Red, which are the tip of the really-is-that-how-it’s-going-to-end iceberg?

Its salvation may come in its cast. Like the 1994 mini-series, which had Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald, Laura San Giacomo, Miguel Ferrer and a cast of thousands, this is a star-studded affair. Amber Heard is a little iffy as Nadine Cross, and the magnificent Whoopi Goldberg needs no introduction, but Marsden’s Stu Redman is an engaging and buoyant hero and Alexander Skarsgard’s Randall Flagg is compelling in every way.

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