Castle Rock

Stephen King isn't my favourite kind of writer, even for adaptations, however one could expect original material by him to have at least some kind of recognizable, coherent structure. This feels distinctly different even to someone with only passing knowledge of Stephen King stories, as it is clearly not an original. This series is full of a sense brooding and doom, however without any coherence or anything to justify one's interest, instead it does what is the norm nowadays in TV writing: it simply assumes one's interest, takes it for granted, because watching stuff is practically a civil duty nowadays. What one is fed then is merely a pastiche of vague thematic references to Stephen King stories.

Aside from lacking any hooks, and generally a sense of believability, it also has these little signs of inferior writing: when a prison guard walks around in the semi-dark with a drawn gun, while the alarm is blaring, a colleague silently creeps up on him from behind to touch him on the shoulder, and because this moment of "surprise" formally ends the clichéd moment of fake-tension, it is supposedly the fault of the guard with the gun when he reacts hostilely, rather than the idiot's for not announcing himself (or saying the other's name) like an intelligent human being. People behave as demanded by the structure, not by any sort of logic or realism. This sense of banality defines all the proceedings and characters.