12 Upcoming New HBO Series To Be Excited About

Few authors have had more impact on film and TV than Stephen King. Granted, not every King adaptation is great, or even good, but his source material draws creators in over and over again. The Outsider is based on King’s 2018 novel, and if the source material is anything to go by, this is going to be a dark and traumatic miniseries in the vein of True Detective. If it can reach the quality of the first season of that, then we’re onto a winner.

King’s novel tells the story of a baseball coach accused of the murder of a child. That’s a pretty bleak beginning, so if that’s not your bag, you might as well keep moving. If you like your drama serious and brooding, this could be right up your street. As is the way with much of King’s work, the story takes place in a small town which slowly sheds its cosy exterior to reveal a terrifying, vaguely supernatural underbelly.

This looks to be grown up horror TV, with richly drawn characters and pathos alongside the scares. The writing team is bolstered with heavyweights like novelists Richard Price and Dennis Lehane (screen credits including The Wire and Mystic River respectively) - the whole thing basically oozes class.

Couple all that with a stacked cast (Ben Mendelsohn, Paddy Considine, Jason Batemen, who produces) and this has all the hallmarks of a critical smash. Stephen King is notoriously prickly about some of the adaptations of his works, but if all the pieces combine on this one, the smart money would be on him lapping it up.