The Outsider (Limited Series)

The Outsider
2020 HBO
Limited Series
The Nicsperiment Score: 8/10

At this point, coming up with a comprehensive list of Stephen King adaptations would be exhausting. The prolific horror writer has produced nearly 100 complete works, and even many of the worst ones have been adapted for film or television. There wait between original work and adaptation gets shorter and shorter, as well. The Outsider, a novel about a mysterious, possibly supernatural child murderer, was published less than two years ago, yet HBO has already produced a limited, ten-episode miniseries based upon the work.
The Outsider centers around the perspective of Ralph Anderson, a grieving small-town police detective played with a perfect balance of bitter sadness and wry disbelief by Ben Mendelsohn. Ralph and his wife, Jeannie, recently lost their son, Derek. When a local boy is murdered, and clear evidence points to the town's little league coach, Terry, Ralph rushes to arrest the man mid-game, in full view of the rest of the town. Once Ralph's got Terry in custody, and is sure that overwhelming DNA evidence, camera footage, and eyewitness testimony will put Terry away forever, the detective receives some disturbing new information: camera and eyewitness testimony also put Terry at a conference many miles away during the time of the murder.
The deeper Ralph looks into the case, the less things add up. Worse still, there may be a supernatural element at work, and if there's something Ralph would like less than incarcerating an innocent man, it's admitting that the murder was committed by something a rational explanation can't contain. When an eccentric, wunderkind private investigator, Holly Gibney, comes onto the case, she only presents even more impossible possibilities. It's more than Ralph can take.
The Outsider certainly feels like a Stephen King tale. The small town, full of decent people who may be harboring dark secrets, is the veteran writer's standard setting. However, The Outsider is one of the few King adaptations that can boast genuinely scares. The atmosphere, greatly heightened by Daniel Bensi & Saunder Jurriaans' unnerving musical contributions, is dark, thick, and unsettling. King adaptations often find themselves in goofy, over-the-top territory, as his folksy, yet horrific tone is tough to recapture visually. However, The Outsider, particularly before the revelation of the villain's true nature, is gripping, tense, and oppressive. Unfortunately, the show can't quite keep this pace, mostly because it's got enough content for seven or eight episodes max, and it runs on for ten. Thankfully, the show's excellent performances, from Mendelsohn's Ralph, to great turns from Cynthia Erivo, Paddy Considine, Jason Bateman, and Mare Winningham, among others, ensure The Outsider is always captivating.
The limited series' ending, which some may find unsatisfying, is surprisingly unsentimental for King, and rang true for me, even up to the open-ended post-credits scene. Overall, the finale is far more Storm of the Century than The Stand, even if there are glimmers of hope. Even if The Outsider does overstay its welcome, it sets high standards for horror television, in both sheer creepiness, as well as in its excellent performances. In an expansive sea of Stephen King adaptions, The Outsider somehow manages to keep its head above water.