10 TV Shows Literally One Step From Perfection
9. Haunting Of Hill House — Get Rid Of Shirley
Mike Flanagan’s Haunting of Hill House adaptation for Netflix was a deservedly massive success when it debuted on the platform in late 2018. Largely eschewing the (brilliant) Shirley Jackson source novel, the show was a moving, clever, and yes, very scary family drama which addressed themes as diverse as addiction, mental illness, and grief across two generations of stellar performances.
Each family member was given room to air their traumas and face their fears, resulting in a finale which succeeded in being a poignant reminder of the horror genre’s strength as a unifying theme throughout generations.
Whoever cut Jack Torrance from the recent Doctor Sleep adaptation could learn something from this Flanagan bloke!
Of course, not every family member could be expected to contribute a moving, intense story to the show. But when the show crammed Shirley’s long hinted-at “trauma” into the last episode and revealed that she felt guilty over an affair, it couldn’t really hope to compare to the overdoses, suicides, and spousal death which has piled up before her big reveal.
Ultimately viewers were left wondering what role the eldest daughter was intended to fulfil in the plot, and her character’s arc—insignificant as it is—could have been cut with no loss to the show as a whole.