With HBO's The Outsider, Richard Price bent Stephen King's story to own aesthetic, making it sadder with more death

The A.V. Club

"There’s no existing TV series based on the work of Stephen King more reverent to its source material than HBO’s The Outsider," says Randall Colburn. "Hulu’s 11/22/63 and Mr. Mercedes deviated in ways that benefitted the originals, while duds like Under The Dome and The Mist did so in ways that showed just how little they trusted them. The Outsider, meanwhile, elaborates on King’s material in some ways—Holly (Cynthia Erivo) gets a love interest; Jack (Marc Menchaca) plays a larger, more interwoven role—but mostly sticks to the major beats, even as they play out differently than they do on the page. So why is it that The Outsider feels so much less like a King adaptation than any of those other shows? The book, after all, is distinctly Kingian, with the author stamping his crime narrative with a folksy ensemble, oodles of myth, a fallible monster, and It-evoking themes that explore the ways adulthood hardens us to the unexplainable, even as the supernatural stares us right in the face. The series, though, is a different beast: Creator Richard Price bends King’s story to his own aesthetic as a purveyor of hard-boiled crime; too far, one could argue (and some have)." ALSO: The Outsider's season finale, explained.