In 2004, creators J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Jeff Lieber introduced one of TV's all-time most intense and absorbing mysteries with Lost. Led by Matthew Fox as Jack Shepherd, the Lost cast found themselves, after a near-fatal plane crash, stranded on a desert island inhabited by more things to be concerned about than their own survival.

Now that Lost is on Netflix, you could binge through the best episodes of Lost for what might be a 37th time. Or, if you were interested in seeing what other perplexing survivalist dramas might be available on more of the best streaming services to subscribe to today (or for purchase or on physical media), read on.

Twin Peaks (1990-1991, 2017)

Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) investigates the murder of a teenage girl in a quaint Washington town where there is even more to be suspicious about.

Why it is a great show to watch if you are a fan of Lost: Starting off relatively grounded before introducing more surreal elements, we would not be surprised if co-creator David Lynch's Twin Peaks, which ended in the '90s with one of the best TV cliffhangers before Showtime revived it decades later, had a heavy influence on Lost.

• Stream Twin Peaks on Paramount+
• Buy Twin Peaks on Amazon
• Buy Twin Peaks on Blu-ray

The Leftovers (2014-2017)

People of the world struggle to maintain happiness and stability in the years after 2% of the Earth's population mysteriously vanishes.

Why it is a great show to watch if you are a fan of Lost: Created by Damon Lindelof with original book author Tom Perotta, The Leftovers is another WTF-drenched drama involving characters who are trapped in other ways, having lost loved ones or their sense of self 

• Stream The Leftovers on Max

From (2022-Present)

A group of people try to figure out a way out to escape from a town that mysteriously imprisons anyone who enters it.

Why it is a great show to watch if you are a fan of Lost: Produced by former Lost EPs Josh Bender and Jeff Pinkner, From is another drama about a group of people struggling to survive while trapped in a mysterious, isolated area where strange occurrences threaten their lives at every turn.

• Stream From on MGM+
• Buy From on Amazon

1899 (2022)

A commercial cruise ship full of immigrants from all over the world faces a nightmarish interruption to its journey when another ship is discovered adrift.

Why it is a great show to watch if you are a fan of Lost: The unfortunately cancelled Netflix original, 1899, is another series about a diverse group of strangers brought together after their travel vessel becomes lost and begins to suffer unexplainable phenomenon.

• Stream 1899 on Netflix

Snowpiercer (2020-Present)

A self-sustaining bullet train becomes Earth's only habitable environment after a climate change experiment ends with cataclysmic results.

Why it is a great show to watch if you are a fan of Lost: Based on a French graphic novel that Bong Joon-ho made into a 2014 dystopian movie favorite, Snowpiercer is yet another series about a diverse group of strangers brought together through tragic and unusual circumstances after an accident involving their travel vessel.

• Stream Snowpiercer on AMC+

The Prisoner (1967-1968)

After resigning from his job, a secret agent (played by series creator Patrick McGoohan) is abducted and brought to a seemingly idyllic village where he cannot remember his own name.

Why it is a great show to watch if you are a fan of Lost: Many writers for Lost cited the British sci-fi thriller, The Prisoner — a hit 1960s drama that was rebooted in 2009 as an AMC miniseries — as an influence on the series, being a mysterious drama set on an inescapable island, for one.

• Stream The Prisoner on Amazon Prime
• Stream The Prisoner on Tubi
• Buy The Prisoner on Blu-ray

Severance (2022-Present)

At a company that keeps its employees' personal and professional memories surgically separate, a group of office teammates (played by Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Christopher Walken, and more) become curious about life on the outside.

Why it is a great show to watch if you are a fan of Lost: Fans of Apple TV+'s multi-layered drama, Severance, which is considered one of the best sci-fi TV shows of its time, have often compared the mysterious company it is set at, Lumen, to the Dharma Initiative from Lost.

• Stream Severance on Apple TV+

Yellowjackets (2022-Present)

Decades after a plane crash left them stranded in the wilderness, a group of former high school soccer teammates continues to be haunted by memories of that traumatic time in their lives in their adulthood.

Why it is a great show to watch if you are a fan of Lost: Also one of the best shows to watch if you like Fallout, Yellowjackets, from creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, bears a somewhat similar plot to Lost, following a group of characters trapped in the wilderness and a boasting a non-linear narrative structure.

• Stream Yellowjackets on Netflix
• Stream Yellowjackets on Paramount+ with Showtime
• Buy Yellowjackets on Amazon
• Buy Yellowjackets on Blu-ray

Dark (2017-2020)

The lives of four German families are upended by the mysterious disappearance of two children.

Why it is a great show to watch if you are a fan of Lost: From Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, the creators of the aforementioned 1899, Dark is often compared to Lost for its penchant for shocking cliffhangers, supernatural elements, and an ominous tone surrounding characters who each carry a worrisome burden.

• Stream Dark on Netflix

Under The Dome (2013-2015)

The citizens of Chester’s Mill, Maine, become suddenly and inexplicably cut off from the rest of the world when a giant, transparent, indestructible force field appears and completely surrounds them.

Why it is a great show to watch if you are a fan of Lost: One of the most distinct differences between the characters in Lost and the characters in developer Brian K Vaughn's CBS TV show based on Stephen King's 2009 novel, Under the Dome, is that they actually are home, but are kept there against their will for reasons unknown.

• Stream Under the Dome on Paramount+
• Buy Under the Dome on DVD

If none of these TV shows end up satisfying the Lost fan in you, go ahead and boot up your Netflix subscription and "go back" to the original. However, you are bound to find some other great series with mysterious twists and absorbing themes of isolation at some point.

The last few days have been very exciting for Stephen King fans. After all, it’s not every week that we get to learn the title of his latest book and early plot details. That’s exactly what we got this past Tuesday when the author revealed that his next novel is called Always Holly and will follow Holly Gibney as she gets involved with a “woman who's a flashpoint in American politics” and gets embroiled in a situation with a dangerous stalker. That’s obviously huge news for Constant Readers looking to further expand their ultimate Stephen King collection… but it’s not the only development to come out of the King world since the last edition of The King Beat.

In addition to the news about Always Holly, King has also provided an update about his potential next book in the Talisman/Black House series, delivered some dark insight into the end of Revival, and listed what he thinks are the 10 best books of the 21st century so far. Without any further delay, let’s dig in!

Stephen King Is Still Developing His Sequel To The Talisman And Black House, But He Isn’t Making Any Promises

Last summer, Constant Readers were delivered some terrific and unexpected news: Stephen King revealed that he was in the process of developing a new story about protagonist Jack Sawyer – the lead character in the 1984 novel The Talisman and its 2001 sequel, Black House. The co-author of both books, Peter Straub, passed away in 2022, but King said that he had been in communication about a fresh idea for a follow-up, and it would be a long tale if he could “muster up the energy to write it.”

This week, we learned that the possible third book in the Jack Sawyer trilogy is still a work in progress… but the work is pretty slow going and it doesn’t seem as though King is making any specific promises at this point about everything coming together.

In the same interview with the Talking Scared podcast this week that revealed the title of Always Holly, Stephen King provided an update about the potential sequel he is working on for The Talisman and Black House. Part of the process is King going back through those previous books and taking specific notes, and he is apparently halfway through that bit of labor. Said the author,

One wouldn’t specifically call Stephen King’s methodology efficient. He isn’t an author who makes a big plan and draws everything out before diving into a story; he simply starts writing with an idea and lets himself get swept away by inspiration. Unfortunately in this case, he’s doing a lot of prep work that may or may not end with the production of a new book.

For those who haven’t read the existing novels, The Talisman introduces Jack Sawyer as a 12-year-old boy who goes on a fantastical adventure in order to save his mother, who is dying from cancer. He discovers that he has the ability to mentally “flip” to a parallel universe called The Territories, and he must seek out a magical totem that will cure his mom. Black House catches up with Jack as an adult and former police detective who finds himself on the hunt for a serial killer who is known to the public as The Fisherman.

Stephen King said that he does feel a bit of responsibility to continue given that Black House ends with readers not knowing the specific fate of Jack Sawyer, and he added that Peter Straub provided him with a neat idea that could propel the project forward:

Always Holly will be Stephen King’s next book (he’s been writing it since February 2023), but perhaps the third Jack Sawyer novel will be his planned tome for 2026? Constant Readers everywhere can keep fingers crossed.

Stephen King Offers A Dark Follow-Up Perspective On The Ending Of One Of His Scariest Novels, And It Is Spectacularly Bleak

SPOILER WARNING: The following section of this column contains massive spoilers for Stephen King’s novel Revival. If you have not read it (and you should, as it’s one of King’s best books), proceed at your own risk!

There are some exceptionally dark endings in the Stephen King canon, from the spiral into insanity that unfurls in Pet Sematary to the horrible death in the finale of Cujo, but there is a case to be made that King has never written anything more soul-crushing than his 2013 novel Revival. This is a book that reveals the truth about the afterlife, and the truth is that we all go to a Lovecraftian hell called The Null where we are tortured by monstrous ant-like beings that are controlled by a leviathan god called Mother. It is deeply fucked up (and that’s actually just one aspect of the tome’s devastating conclusion).

But guess what? The imagined reality that King has created is even darker than you may have thought.

The most recent episode of The Losers' Club: A Stephen King Podcast is a three-plus-hour breakdown of Revival, and there is a point in the middle of the conversation where the hosts debate a question: would you rather there be nothingness after you die or continue existence in The Null? This led to a discussion of post-death consciousness and the potential for revolt against the ants and Mother… but Stephen King himself set the record straight this past week on his personal Twitter account, posting,

So there goes any hope out the window. If there is any truth to Stephen King’s vision, there are no alternative afterlife options beyond The Null, and once you die, you are forever trapped in a chaotic nightmare world that is eternal and inescapable. When recommending Revival, I like to tell people that it’s a book that actually gave me an extra reason to fear death, and when you fully wrap your mind around its ending, I think that’s reasonable.

After more than a decade of being in print, Revival has proven to be very difficult for filmmakers to try and adapt (though not for lack of trying), and one can imagine that in addition to other challenges, studios may balk at its shattering ending. Regardless of whether or not it ever makes it to the big or small screen, however, it can be said that it stands among Stephen King’s greatest novels.

Stephen King Names The 10 Best Books Of The 21st Century So Far, And One Of His Own Books Is On The List

As those of you who regularly read this column know, Stephen King has never been shy about sharing his opinion. It’s rare that a few days go by without the author sharing a review or personal take about a piece of work in an interview or on social media, as he is an avid reader and dedicated film/television viewer. This week, we got something a little bit extra special, as the author shared his list of what he considers to be the 10 best books of the 21st century so far with The New York Times.

The newspaper has polled a number of writers about what they think are the best examples of post-2001 literature, and King provided his personal list – which notably includes one of his own works. You can check out his picks below:

• Under The Dome by Stephen King
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
• No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
• Oryx And Crake by Margaret Atwood
• The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
• The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
• The Sympathizer by Viet Thang Nguyen

It’s a great list full of standout titles (I haven’t read all of them, but most), but I will admit to being personally surprised by the last pick – and not just because Stephen King chose one of his own books for his Top 10. King has said multiple times over the years that 2006’s Lisey’s Story is what he considers to be his favorite among the novels that he has written, and yet he chose Under The Dome from his own canon when considering the best literature of the 21st century. Clearly he recognizes a distinction between “favorite” and “best,” and it would be fascinating to learn what that distinction is.

If you haven’t read any of the titles that are noted here, make note of them here, and perhaps pick up a copy of one of them next time you find yourself at your local bookstore.

Recommendation Of The Week: "The Turbulence Expert"

Because Independence Day landed on Thursday last week, I took a break from my recent string of You Like It Darker recommendations to pitch a perfectly appropriate short story for the holiday – but now I’ll go back to highlighting the phenomenal roster of tales in Stephen King’s latest omnibus. This time around, I’m suggesting that you crack open the book and check out “The Turbulence Expert,” which concerns subject matter that King himself finds perfectly terrifying: Clear-air turbulence.

First published in the 2018 horror anthology Fright Or Flight before being included in You Like It Darker, “The Turbulence Expert” ponders if the only reason planes are able to survive horrific rough spots in the air is because there are special people onboard who are able to psychically protect the craft. Protagonist Craig Dixon is a man who hates flying, but he is provided a comfortable living providing the world an exceptionally special service, and the story follows him as he hops on what might be a doomed flight traveling from Boston to Sarasota.

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of The King Beat, but I’ll be back! You can find this column every Thursday here on CinemaBlend, and while you wait for the next roundup of news, you can check out my series Adapting Stephen King, digging into the long history of King’s work on screen and learn about all of the adaptations in the works with our Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV guide.

If you enjoy reading or watching the source material before its adaptation comes out, chances are you’ve been disappointed a few times over when a movie or series based on a book comes out. However, in the case of these TV shows, their creators actually found ways to go beyond what was originally told and build out stories that have become larger than their original intentions. Have you seen all these and what did you think about how they compare? 

Bridgerton 

If you’ve read the Bridgerton books in order before or between seasons of the massive Netflix series, chances are you’ve had some thoughts about the differences between them. While each of Julia Quinn’s novels pretty much stands alone and doesn’t have to be read in order to enjoy each romance, the series was adapted to have all the stakes, side plots and cliffhangers a hit TV show should have. The series even inspired the spinoff, Queen Charlotte, which involved Bridgerton characters but was not based on one of Quinn’s works.

Game of Thrones

George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels were adapted in a big way. While the first few seasons follow the source material rather closely, the last few seasons were in development as Martin was completing the rest of the series, and a ton of plotlines were completely invented by the showrunners and staff writers. Perhaps that’s why the finale is so divisive among fans. 

The Office 

After Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s The Office became a hit in the U.K. across its two seasons, Greg Daniels and NBC adapted an American version of the workplace mockumentary sitcom. While it was certainly inspired by the source material, the series starring Steve Carell earned a whole life of its own across over 200 episodes, and remains one of the most-streamed shows even a decade after its finale. 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

It’s often forgotten that genre favorite Buffy The Vampire Slayer is actually based on a 1992 movie of the same name. The series’ creator originally wrote it as a movie that wasn’t nearly as popular as the TV adaptation of the idea he cooked up a few years later. With seven seasons to the WB show’s name, it’s safe to say that it went way beyond its source material. And wow, are we happy Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Buffy Summers was on our televisions for so long! 

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power 

J.R.R. Tolkien gifted the fantasy genre with four classic novels set in Middle-earth, The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Following Peter Jackson's adapting of all of them beautifully (and set to make another one), Amazon Studios decided to go beyond the source material with its super expensive series, The Rings Of Power. The series primarily builds upon Tolkien’s appendices on Middle-earth as it depicts the world’s Second Age. 

Big Little Lies

Liane Moriarty’s bestselling novel Big Little Lies brought together stars like Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley and Zoë Kravitz to tell the story of five women living in Monterey, California who become part of a murder investigation. It was initially supposed to be a miniseries, but following its success, a second season built on the story from Season 1. 

Riverdale

CW’s Riverdale was inspired by the pages of Archie Comics, an ongoing comic book series that started back in 1941. The series developed by the comic publisher’s CCO Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is a much darker take on the universe as it begins as a murder mystery in the town of Riverdale. The series not only went beyond its source material across its seven seasons, but the comic book had a gritty reboot in recent years as well. 

Watchmen  

The Watchmen comic book series has long been thought of as one of the best the medium has ever put to paper. The HBO miniseries of the same name lived up to the series by being an all-time great adaptation, but it certainly took quite a few creative liberties and built upon the ‘80s comic book to reflect the time it was made, by changing and fleshing out its characters more and boldly discussing racism and extremism with its storyline. 

Fargo

In 1996, the Coen Brothers made a classic with the black comedy, Fargo. Across five seasons Noah Hawley has built on the filmmakers’ vision with an anthology series that takes place in a new location, era and with a new cast of characters each time. While the Fargo series has deep roots in its movie, it has become so much bigger and fuel for so much more storytelling. 

Killing Eve

BBC’s Killing Eve is based on Luke Jennings’ Villanelle, which was a series of novellas about a Russian orphan who is trained as a hitwoman and the MI5 agent who starts to catch her trail. While the series is a lot more character-driven than the much more procedural novels, the series goes beyond the source material in this context by only teasing the romance Eve and Villanelle have in the books. Fans are still mad at the finale years later! 

Good Omens 

The first season of Good Omens adapted Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s 1990 novel, however when it came to the second season, which came out four years after the initial series, moved away from simply telling the main events of the novel. The entire season was co-written by Neil Gaiman and allowed the world-renowned author to delve further into Michael Sheen’s Aziraphale and David Tennant’s Crowley stories. 

The Leftovers

HBO’s The Leftovers adapted the novel it's based on in its first season. Following its success, two more seasons were made for the supernatural fiction series about a global event that leaves 2 percent of the world’s population missing. Interestingly enough, the last two seasons were even more acclaimed than its debut season featuring the prime source material.  

The Witcher

Rather than Netflix adapting Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher fantasy novels, the differences are so major between the TV series and the source material that it feels a lot more like an inspiration for the series starring Henry Cavill than anything else. The popular series, also known for being a video game franchise, also inspired the 2022 spinoff The Witcher: Blood Origin.  

House of Cards

Netflix’s hit drama, House of Cards, was adapted from a BBC series and novel before it. However, in the case of the source material, the show was about politics in the United Kingdom. The series starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, however, took the material and adapted it to be set about U.S. politics, particularly regarding Frank Underwood’s ruthless race to become president. 

The Man In The High Castle

Philip K. Dick's 1962 novel The Man In The High Castle was adapted into an Amazon series across four seasons. Dick’s daughter, who was heavily involved in the series, told SYFY WIRE that she encouraged the writers to use the source material as an “inspiration and a spiritual guide” rather than a literal interpretation. That’s very much true for the science fiction storyline that imagines an alternate ending for World War II. 

The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, is the source material for the Hulu hit starring Elisabeth Moss. While the first season leaves things where things wrap up in the book, the Emmy-winning series has continued to follow Offred’s life in the dystopian world past those events through four more seasons and is set to end with the sixth and final season. By building upon the story further, Offred and its other characters have had longer storylines that tell more than 300 pages could. 

Ted Lasso

Before AppleTV+ had a hit on their hands with Ted Lasso, its source material came from a very peculiar source. Jason Sudeikis’ beloved fictional coach came from the SNL alum being part of a slew of promotional coverage for NBC Sports’s coverage of England's Premier League. The streaming series very much went past where it started from given the storylines told across three seasons of the heartwarming comedy. 

The Haunting Of Hill House

Mike Flanagan beautifully adapted Shirley Jackson’s 1959 gothic horror novel, but at face value the two The Haunting Of Hill House titles are very different from one another. The source material mainly focuses on Eleanor (who Victoria Pedretti plays in the series) and her descent into madness whilst the show takes a deeper look into her entire family’s deep-seated trauma. 

Justified

FX’s Justified is based on the Elmore Leonard short story Fire In the Hole, allowing creators of the Western series to build out the world of the work across six seasons. Through Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens, Justified allowed for Leonard’s ideas the author thought often “got the characters better” than he put to paper, per THR. 

The Magicians

Syfy’s series, The Magicians, is based on Lev Grossman’s trilogy of fantasy novels. While the source material certainly guides the storyline, it's told completely out of order and involves post-grad students rather than high schoolers. The series went on for five seasons. 

Bates Motel

One of the best horror movies of all time is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (also a novel), which became the inspiration for A&E’s Bates Motel. The five-season series told a contemporary story regarding the origin story of Norman Bates and his complicated relationship with his mother through the performances of Freddie Highmore and Vera Farmiga. 

13 Reasons Why 

Years prior to Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why being the subject of numerous controversies throughout its run, it began as a 2007 novel by Jay Asher about a high school freshman who shares the reasons why she died by suicide. The series went beyond the source material by making the story a lot longer and building out many more characters. For example, a major plotline of the show is Hannah’s parents decide to sue the school, which is not part of the novel at all.

What We Do In The Shadows

In 2014, Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi offered a unique and rather hilarious take on vampires with What We Do In The Shadows. Years later, the duo decided to adapt their mockumentary further by making it into a TV show that went on for five seasons, ending in 2023. 

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off 

Over a decade after Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World adapted Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series, O’Malley decided to team up with Wright and Netflix to build upon the story in the format of an anime and reunite the original actors from the movie in the voice roles. The series follows Ramona Flowers trying to find a missing Scott Pilgrim. 

Ratched

Among Ryan Murphy’s many TV shows, he made a series out of Nurse Mildred Ratched, a character originally from Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and portrayed by Louise Fletcher in the 1975 movie adaptation. The series starring Sarah Paulson as the titular character depicts Ratched prior to the events of the original story. It was canceled after one season. 

The 100

The CW series, The 100, is based on the YA science fiction novel series by Kass Morgan. However, across the show’s seven seasons, it went beyond the source material by telling a much different story that took a more mature approach and focused a lot more on the survival element of the series. 

The Fall Of The House Of Usher

Mike Flanagan took inspiration from a myriad of Edgar Allan Poe short stories to bring together one storyline for his excellent Netflix horror show, The Fall of the House of Usher. The show pays tribute to the iconic author by telling a new story revolving around the Usher family, the CEO of a corrupt pharmaceutical company, as each member of the family starts to die one by one. 

The Night Manager

John le Carré’s 1993 espionage novel, The Night Manager was turned into a BBC miniseries starring Tom Hiddleston in 2016. As the author wrote in The Guardian at the time of its release, he spoke about the many changes from the source material, which at first took him aback but then had him saying he wishes he would have “written Mrs. Burr into my novel instead of her ponderous husband.” 

Under The Dome

Stephen King’s Under The Dome novel was turned into a CBS sci-fi series of the same name by Brian K. Vaughan, but was often talked about for being quite different from the source material. Back in 2013, King wrote on his website that he found the adaptation to be “very good” and was a “necessity” that he “approved of” “wholeheartedly.” 

Lessons In Chemistry 

Bonnie Garmus’ best-selling novel, Lessons In Chemistry was turned into a series starring Brie Larson to much success. While it’s a stunning adaptation fans of the book can appreciate, that’s particularly because the showrunner, Lee Eisenberg decided to not make it a straight adaptation and add some things the book didn’t have. One particularly great addition was the character development of Harriet Sloane, who is a black civil rights activist in the series rather than a 55-year-old white woman. 

The Haunting Of Bly Manor

Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting Of Bly Manor is an amalgamation of numerous great horror stories by Henry James, centrally through his novella Turn Of The Screw, but also through some other of his short stories like The Romance of Certain Old Clothes, The Beast in the Jungle and The Jolly Corner. Flanagan used the works as inspiration to tell a larger, new storyline about a young au pair who begins to witness hauntings as she takes care of two young children. 

The Midnight Club 

Christopher Pike famously wrote a ton of mystery-thrillers for young adults from the 80s and so on. For Mike Flanagan’s The Midnight Club, the filmmaker drew from over 20 of them to make the 10-episode Netflix series about a group of eight terminally ill young adults who form a storytelling club. 

So many series go beyond their source material, the question is whether they go too far. Most of these picks are well-loved TV shows that were made better by their additions!

I love the works of Stephen King and the movies and TV programs that have been inspired by his writing… but I am also a rational person who understands that not every adaptation is great. In fact, some of them are just downright terrible.

We have done rankings of the best Stephen King movies and best Stephen King TV shows/miniseries. This, however, is the opposite of those, and runs down the list of the worst Stephen King adaptations in no particular order. 

Under The Dome

Under The Dome is a sprawling novel that examines how a small town might behave in a mysterious crisis, but everything that is captivating and compelling about the book is thrown out the window by the TV show. The CBS series decided to treat the fascinating work of post-9/11 fiction as a gateway to ripping off the mystery box structure of Lost, and while it develops some energy in its first season, the final two are train wrecks.

Children Of The Corn

Beyond the fact that it has spawned a seemingly endless number of sequels, the most notable thing about Children Of The Corn is that it exists in history as the first bad Stephen King movie. It starts well with a horrifying sequence where the children of Gatlin, Nebraska murder all of their elders, but it gets lifeless after that and evokes none of the terror of King’s short story.

Graveyard Shift

Graveyard Shift gets points for including a wacky turn from Brad Dourif as a freaky exterminator and the gnarly rat/bat monster at the very end… but it also loses points because the former doesn’t end up being killed by the latter. The film drifts far from the source material and delivers little more than hollow characters meeting grim deaths. It’s Kingsploitation.

Sometimes They Come Back

The short story on which Sometimes They Come Back features a killer ending with the protagonist using satanic rituals to vanquish undead bullies tormenting him… but the TV movie adaptation lacks all of the edge of its source material and is a mostly dull experience.

The Tommyknockers

It’s hard to totally blame the miniseries adaptation of The Tommyknockers for being bad. After all, the book on which it’s based is one of Stephen King’s worst. Still, that doesn’t excuse its bizarre and dumb deviations from the novel, including both major cuts and bad alterations to the motives of the aliens.

Dreamcatcher

Dreamcatcher has the handicap of being based on a less-than-stellar Stephen King work… but it doesn’t get to escape this list because it’s still an awful film based on a King book. Like the source material, it starts off well, featuring a group of friends who find a fun outdoor weekend ruined by vicious aliens, but it nosedives as soon as the military shows up and the story starts digging into the extraterrestrial’s invasion.

The Mangler

Like Stephen King, both Tobe Hooper and Robert Englund are undisputed horror genre legends… but the one and only film that brings all three together is a mess. The terrific King short story is at the heart of The Mangler, but the subplot involving Englund’s leg-braced, one-eyed owner of the Blue Ribbon Laundry is a far too schlocky add on, and Ted Levine delivers a dull turn as the film’s protagonist.

Maximum Overdrive

There is a campy quality that can be appreciated in Stephen King’s one and only attempt at directing, but there is far too much that doesn’t work for Maximum Overdrive to get a full pass. There is plenty of ridiculous death and silly carnage, but it’s missing the strong qualities like character development and story that are typically the foundations of King’s work.

Carrie (2002)

The 2002 remake of Carrie gets some credit for attempting a cinematic equivalent of the original book’s epistolary structure, but it has a wrongheaded sympathy for its titular protagonist – partially motivated by the consideration of the TV movie as a backdoor pilot – and it struggles to get out from under the shadow of director Brian De Palma’s classic.

Thinner

While director Tom Holland’s The Langoliers is a movie that can be defended because of its faithfulness to the source material and wild approach to time travel, the filmmaker’s follow-up King adaptation doesn’t get the same treatment. The book has a wryness to its cynicism that makes the material palatable, but Thinner’s adaptation is dry and mean, and its gross stereotypes about the Romani culture hasn’t let it age well.

Trucks

If you thought Maximum Overdrive was bad, just wait until you get a load of Trucks! Based on the same short story as Stephen King’s directorial debut (“Trucks”), the TV contains exactly one entertaining moment – a scene where a toy truck crushes a man’s head in – and it’s not even in the version that originally aired on USA Network because it was too gory for broadcast. There is nothing likable about this lifeless adaptation, and it has a claim for “Worst Stephen King Movie Of All Time.”

Apt Pupil

Anyone would be challenged to make a palatable movie based on the novella “Apt Pupil,” which is as dark as anything Stephen King has ever written, and Bryan Singer certainly didn’t crack the code with his 1998 film. It’s a deeply unpleasant work that also scratches at the surface of the source material and waters it to down to the point of being ineffectual.

The Mist (2017)

Is The Mist TV series meant to be a remake of the Stephen King novella, or a spinoff to Frank Darabont’s film adaptation? That’s never totally clear, and it hampers the work. Following multiple characters traveling to multiple locations, it’s never able to recreate the human-centric paranoia that is so brilliant in the source material, and it fails to do anything interesting with the eponymous supernatural fog and the monsters that dwell within it.

Secret Window

It’s not impossible to make a good movie with a twist involving a protagonist with dissociative identity disorder (Fight Club is pretty damn good, after all), but Secret Window is a mostly rote take on that trope that isn’t elevated much at all by tricky cinematography and a sinister turn from John Turturro.

Riding The Bullet

If you’re looking for some hitchhiking-related Stephen King horror, allow me to steer you toward the anthology TV movie Quicksilver Highway and its adaptation of “Chattery Teeth.” Riding The Bullet is a movie that is all over the place tonally as its protagonist travels to be at his dying mother’s bedside, as it tries to be disgusting and gory in one minute, and serious and solemn in the next. None of it works.

"The Road Virus Heads North" in Nightmares And Dreamscapes

The majority of the episodes in the anthology series Nightmares And Dreamscapes are solid adaptations of Stephen King short stories, but “The Road Virus Heads North” is a standout exception. Its biggest issue is that the plot centers around a “scary painting” that isn’t scary in the slightest, and that lack of terror is ultimately parlayed into violence and death with zero tension or investment.

Desperation

Ron Perlman is a force to be reckoned with as the mad, possessed Collie Entragian in Desperation, and he is surrounded by a talented cast, but the TV movie fails to generate real scares past its first act and once all of the characters come together. The contemplations on the nature of god from the book come across as preachy and heavy-handed.

Children Of The Corn (2009)

Donald P. Borchers’s remake of Children Of The Corn has the distinction of being a much more faithful adaptation of Stephen King’s short story compared to the first feature-length attempt, but “more faithful” doesn’t always mean better. The bickering protagonists are obnoxious and impossible to root for even in the most dire circumstances, and they can’t die fast enough amid the tedium that plays out in the movie’s second and third acts.

Dolan's Cadillac

The short story “Dolan’s Cadillac” is Stephen King’s riff on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” in that it centers on a revenge tale where the antagonist ends up being entombed – but that narrative does not work at all stretched out to feature length for director Jeff Beesley’s 2010 feature. Like some of the worst King movies, it is deeply unpleasant, and nothing is helped by Wes Bentley being miscast and failing to capture the main character’s descent into madness.

Haven

Haven loses points right off the bat for barely having anything to do with the book on which it’s based (The Colorado Kid), but mostly the TV series is a generic monster-of-the-week show with lame season-long arcs. There are a few engaging episodes, but for the most part, the 78 episodes are tepid sci-fi mysteries solved by the three main protagonists (who are locked in an intolerable love triangle).

Carrie (2013)

Factoring in how the 2002 TV remake of Carrie failed to escape the shadow of the original despite a big change in story structure, the 2013 film does even less to try and distance itself from the classic, and it suffers mightily for it. Chloë Grace Moretz is badly miscast in the lead role, and there is simply too much that is overly familiar in this adaptation.

A Good Marriage

A Good Marriage is a film built on a good story foundation – centering on a wife who learns that her husband is leading a double life as a serial killer – but it’s an adaptation that without a pulse. It’s based on the story of Dennis Rader a.k.a. the BTK killer, and while it works hard not to be exploitative by keeping the story centered on the spouse instead of the murderer, we don’t see enough of her inner turmoil as she decides whether she should call the police and risk destroying her family.

Mercy

If you’re looking for a good adaptation of Stephen King’s short story “Gramma,” watch the episode with that name written by Harlan Ellison for the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone and stay far away from Mercy. The additions made to make the material fit feature length do nothing to add to the personal, intimate terror of the original work, and an inability to create effective atmosphere leaves its horror wholly dependent on lame jump scares.

Big Driver

Big Driver was made as a rape revenge TV movie for the Lifetime network, and it’s exactly what you’d expect from that description. It’s not exploitative, but it is extremely basic and overly familiar, and despite the fact that it is just being faithful to the source material, there are scenes that feel like commercials for TomTom GPS devices.

Cell

Stephen King is responsible for writing a number of great adaptations of his own books, but Cell is his biggest blunder. Just about the entire second half of the book is altered for the worse for the film, the characters don’t possess the depth they need, and much like the original Children Of The Corn, there isn’t anything scary that plays out after the horrifying opening sequence.

The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower is a special kind of bad Stephen King movie in that it’s one of the few that feels like an insult to Stephen King’s Constant Readers. The author’s brilliant, seven-book series is an epic that blends genres and follows complicated, wonderful characters… and the adaptation is a sub-90 minute (without credits) mess that simplifies everything about the source material and doesn’t even bother including a number of main protagonists.

Pet Sematary (2019)

Watching Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer's Pet Sematary, you get the sense that the filmmakers were petrified of being compared to the original 1989 film and felt compelled to make their movie wildly different. This was a huge mistake. Not only is the story less interesting with the death of Ellie Creed instead of Gage Creed, but the movie never delivers the spiraling madness that is featured in the horrifying novel.

The Stand (2020)

For a while, it seemed like the streaming age was Hollywood’s gateway to finally creating a truly great adaptation of The Stand… but that’s not what we got in the 2020 miniseries. It’s a mess structurally – twisting King’s expansive novel into a poorly paced non-linear narrative – and cuts some of the best stuff from the source material, including the journeys of Donald Merwin Elbert a.k.a. The Trashcan Man and Tom Cullen.

Mr. Harrigan's Phone

The novella “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” is a spooky tale about modern technology and the afterlife, but director John Lee Hancock’s adaptation puts a stronger emphasis on a coming of age tale with a horror bent – and neither totally work. There isn’t much said in the journey of the protagonist, and there is a lacking chemistry between stars Jaeden Martell and Donald Sutherland.

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines is a unique adaptation in that it adapts the work of Stephen King like no other adaptation has – but the end result is only mediocre in its best moments. The story of Timmy Baterman is a compelling one as a chapter in Pet Sematary, but not enough is creatively done to expand upon it, and the film doesn’t do anything particularly interesting to add to the book’s lore.

Hearts In Atlantis

The book on which Hearts In Atlantis is based is a sweet, bleak collection of connected stories with direct links to Stephen King’s phenomenal Dark Tower saga, and little that’s interesting about it is maintained in director Scott Hicks’ adaptation. The performances by Anton Yelchin and Anthony Hopkins are sweet, but the film is a mostly rote coming of age tale.

Bag Of Bones

Bag Of Bones is one of Stephen King’s most beautifully written novels, as the author takes a dip into the world of gothic romance, but everything about the adaptation feels flat – from the tepid depiction of the evil millionaire Max Devore to the May/December flirtation between protagonist Mike Noonan and doomed widow Mattie Devore.

We can always hope that all future Stephen King adaptations will be better than these 32, and you can keep track of all the projects that are currently in development with our Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV guide.

By 2013, Hollywood had managed to produce two different television shows based on novels by Stephen King. The first was 2002’s The Dead Zone on USA Network, which was ahead of its time in development, but ultimately exhausted its premise in episodic storytelling before being cancelled and unable to satisfy any of its macro-scale plots (those either from King’s text or those of the series’ own invention). SyFy followed by airing Haven in 2010, and long before the end of its third of five seasons it had totally dismissed its “source material,” the 2005 book The Colorado Kid. Needless to say, the art had not been perfected.

There was already an established lesson to be learned about on-going projects opting to stray from Stephen King’s creation and intent, but this was not registered in the creation of Under The Dome: the CBS series executive produced by King and Steven Spielberg, and originally developed by Brian K. Vaughn.

While some exceptional talent brought the show to life, this is not a success story.

As Vaughn told Entertainment Weekly in 2013, Stephen King gave the permission to treat his 2009 novel more as a place to start and not treat his writing as the exclusive way to tell the story. Said the Season 1 showrunner,

Brian K. Vaughn, who had network television experience via ABC’s hit series Lost, and the writers proved to have no issue deviating from the book, and while the first run of 13 episodes could be called tolerable, its quality took a sharp decline in both Season 2 and Season 3 with flat, indistinguishable characters and goofy science-fiction sensibilities.

So where did things go wrong? Allow me to explain as we take a peek Under The Dome for this week’s Adapting Stephen King.

What Under The Dome Is About

Stephen King has a well-earned reputation for being prolific, having at least one book published every year – and only making that reputation more impressive is knowing that there are also a number of stories he writes that either never get finished or never see the light of day. There’s actually a dedicated Wikipedia page about these projects.

This was very nearly the fate of Under The Dome. As I noted above, the novel was published in 2009, but it was all the way back in 1976 – the year between the release of Salem’s Lot and The Shining – that Stephen King wrote the epic’s first 75 pages. He spent two weeks writing about the day a mysterious dome fell over the town of Chester’s Mill, Maine, cutting the residents off from the rest of the world, but then, in his own words, he “crept away from it with [his] tail between [his] legs.”

King explains in the Author’s Note at the end of Under The Dome that he became overwhelmed by the story and began to feel that he bit off more than he could chew with the idea. First there was the fact that he was going to be juggling a vast ensemble of characters, and secondly he was intimidated by the amount of research that the narrative would require to be realistic. He was prepared to put the people of Chester’s Mill through an ecological nightmare through the plot, but he didn’t have the understanding of the science to properly execute it in his writing.

That 75-page manuscript was eventually lost, but the idea for Under The Dome never left Stephen King’s mind, and a few years later he took another crack at it – this time approaching the story with the title The Cannibals. The author has a section about it on his official website, and he dates the work to when he was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the early 1980s working with George A. Romero on 1982’s Creepshow. The plot was rejiggered so that the setting would be a “depressing suburban apartment complex” like the one where he was staying, and he wrote almost five hundred pages… but again he hit a wall.

What eventually let Stephen King finish Under The Dome was a key collaboration. In the summer of 2007, the writer asked his friend Russ Dorr, a physician’s assistant whom he had previously consulted on The Stand and other books, to take on the role of head researcher for the project. King credits a number of the book’s most inventive survival moments to Dorr, including the homemade radiation suits made with lead sheeting and the idea to use car tires like oxygen tanks when the atmosphere turns poisonous. It took decades of work, but Under The Dome hit stores on November 10, 2009.

The book shares a lot in common with Stephen King’s “The Mist,” in that it features a supernatural occurrence as an inciting incident (the dome falling over Chester’s Mill), but a great deal of the horror is rooted in the worst aspects of human nature. It’s a marathon read with sections and chapters told from more than a dozen different perspectives from around the small Maine town, chronicling the chaos that erupts not just from the panic following the disaster, but criminality in the local government that existed prior.

Leading Team Rational is Dale “Barbie” Barbara, a former soldier-turned-fry cook whom President Barack Obama himself promotes to Colonel during the crisis; and Julia Shumway, the middle-aged right wing Editor In Chief of the local newspaper. Unfortunately, they have to compete for leadership and the hearts and minds of the citizenship with “Big” Jim Rennie, the town’s second selectman and a religious zealot/fascist who sees nothing but opportunity when the dome comes down.

How Under The Dome Differs From Stephen King’s Book

Under The Dome has the distinction of being the first fully serialized on-going series based on a Stephen King book, so there really did exist the opportunity to adapt the massive tome that is the source material faithfully – but there is a key change in approach between the two works that defines why the book and the show are radically different. While King wrote the novel because of a fascination with how normal, post-9/11 Americans would react in a fantastical circumstance, the TV writers and network evidently felt that material wouldn’t bring viewers back week-to-week, and thusly opted to slather everything in sci-fi nonsense.

There is most definitely a sci-fi aspect to the book, as it’s revealed at the end that the dome is the creation of alien children doing the equivalent of burning ants with a magnifying glass. But that’s a minor fraction of the storytelling compared to the sinister machinations of “Big” Jim Rennie – who secretly incites a riot at the town grocery store as an excuse for increasing the size of the police force (a police force that he controls), and frames Dale “Barbie” Barbara for a quadruple homicide in order to hide murders that he himself has committed and keep under wraps the massive meth lab that he has been running for years with government resources.

Instead of this excellent human drama, the CBS series starts by suggesting the dome has a kind of will of its own, its power generator taking the form of a black egg that occasionally glows pink and is looking for four “hands” to communicate with it. After a number of plot zig zags in the first 26 episodes (suggesting the writers had no idea where the story was headed), it’s eventually revealed in Season 3 that the dome was created as a kind of incubator by a body-snatching extraterrestrial race. By the end of the show’s run, the plot actually has more in common with The Tommyknockers than Under The Dome – complete with a prominent role played by Marg Helgenberger (the star of the dreadful 1993 miniseries).

The characters in the ensemble cast of the series share names with counterparts in the book, but there isn’t a single one of them who is directly translated. The heroic Barbie, played by Mike Vogel, for example, is introduced in the very first scene as a shady debt collector who murders the husband of Julia Shumway – who, played by Rachelle Lefevre, is made to be decades younger than the character in the novel and isn’t a lifelong Chester’s Mill resident. Dean Norris’ “Big” Jim is made to be far less sly and psychotic, and by Season 2 he even ceases to be an antagonist as his villainy is outweighed by plot.

Those are all big changes, but they’re actually some of the most subtle performed by the Under The Dome series. Jim’s son, Junior Rennie (Alexander Koch), isn’t depicted as having a brain tumor that sends him into homicidal fits, and in the first two seasons he’s bizarrely aligned with the show’s protagonists. Even without the undiagnosed cancer he does still attack Angie McAlister (Britt Robertson) in the pilot episode, but he notably doesn’t kill her, and instead locks her up in his father’s bomb shelter – leaving her to be a recurring character on the show. Angie is eventually killed in the Season 2 premiere by Sam Verdreaux (Eddie Cahill)… who isn’t the town drunk described in Stephen King’s novel, but instead a recovering alcoholic and former EMT who lives in isolation and is made to be “Big” Jim’s ex-brother-in-law/Junior’s uncle.

Everything that I’ve described here is really only scratching the surface when it comes to comparing and contrasting Under The Dome and the CBS series adaptation (I haven’t even mentioned all of the characters eliminated completely). Really, they’re completely different creations that share a title, a setting, character names, and a set-up… and that’s pretty much it.

Is It Worthy Of The King?

Prior to the release of the most recent adaptation of The Stand in 2020, Stephen King spoke with the New York Times about his history with projects on the small screen. When it came to the subject of Under The Dome, he wasn’t exactly effusive:

I would argue that Stephen King is being polite there, as Under The Dome is actually quite a bit worse than mediocre. It’s a show that doesn’t have any themes, and doesn’t make an attempt to say anything about anything. While the writers of the show might call the characters “complex” for their frequent moral swings, the more apt adjective would be “undefined,” as personal motives morph episode-to-episode.

While the 2002 TV series The Dead Zone was ahead of its time in trying to serialize a very structured book before being forced into being a procedural, Under The Dome is the exact opposite – which is to say that it’s a wasted opportunity. A three-season, 39 episode series really is the ideal way one could imagine adapting the book that Stephen King wrote, but the 2013 show goes about it in a terrible way, and as a result a proper live-action take may never get made.

How To Watch Under The Dome

If I haven’t successfully warded off your interest in watching Under The Dome, you can stream all three seasons of the show with a few clicks if you have a Paramount+ subscription. Even without one you still have some digital options. If you’re not one who minds commercial interruptions, it’s available to watch on Pluto TV, and you can purchase individual episodes on Amazon Prime Video. For physical media collectors and those trying to build the Ultimate Stephen King Collection, you can buy Season 1, Season 2, and Season 3 on Blu-ray (the Complete Series box set is DVD only).

For next week’s column, I’ll be examining yet another interesting first in the history of Stephen King adaptations: the first remake of an adaptation that had already been remade. In addition to seeing the premiere of Under The Dome, 2013 was also the year that director Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie hit theaters – a new big screen take on King’s seminal novel following Brian De Palma’s 1976 classic and the 2002 TV movie. Look for the feature in CinemaBlend’s Movies section next Wednesday, and in the meantime click through the banners below to discover all of the previous installments.

One could make a strong argument that no single creator has made a greater contribution to pop culture in the last 50 years than Stephen King. It all began with Carrie, the book in 1974 and the movie in 1976, and the author since then has not only established himself as one of the most prolific professional writers alive, but a cross-medium legend. He puts out at least one new book (be it a novel, a collection of short stories, or non-fiction) annually, and it’s actually rare for a year to go by in the 21st century without seeing at least one adaptation premiere on either the big screen or on television.

Between Stephen King movies, books, and TV, his body of work also happens to be a wonderful playground for fans who see themselves as “collectors” – and if you’re one of those people, we’ve built this feature for you. I’ve personally spent years building my own perfect Stephen King collection, and knowing there is a wide world of Constant Readers out there I figured I’d lend a hand helping others do the same. From Carrie, to IT, to Holly, let’s dig in! 

Stephen King Books

It all starts with the books, so we’ll begin the collecting journey here. More advanced collectors (and those with the available disposable income) may be inclined to go the route of buying First Edition copies of each of the titles (most of which are hardcovers), but this is more of a starter guide that points towards the best commonly available editions of each one (which generally means that they are purchasable at a reasonable price).

Must-Own Stephen King Books

If you’re building a core Stephen King collection, it’s a must to start with the classics (Carrie, Firestarter, The Dead Zone), the series (The Dark Tower, The Bill Hodges Trilogy), and the epics (The Stand, IT). The novella collections are special, as are most of his short story omnibi.

• Carrie (1974) – Hardcover
• Salem's Lot (1975) – Hardcover
• The Shining (1977) – Hardcover
• Rage (1977)/The Long Walk (1979)/Roadwork (1981)/The Running Man (1982) – Hardcover (Out Of Print)
• Night Shift (1978) – Hardcover
• The Stand (1978) – Hardcover
• The Dead Zone (1979) – Hardcover
• Firestarter (1980) – Hardcover
• Danse Macabre (1981) – Hardcover
• Cujo (1981) – Hardcover
• The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982) – Hardcover
• Different Seasons (1982) – Hardcover
• Christine (1983) – Hardcover
• Pet Sematary (1983) – Hardcover
• The Talisman (1984) – Hardcover
• Skeleton Crew (1985) – Hardcover
• IT (1986) – Hardcover
• The Dark Tower II: The Drawing Of The Three (1987) – Hardcover
• Misery (1987) – Hardcover
• The Dark Half (1989) – Hardcover
• Four Past Midnight (1990) – Hardcover
• Needful Things (1991) – Hardcover
• The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (1991) – Hardcover
• Gerald's Game (1992) – Hardcover
• Dolores Claiborne (1992) – Hardcover
• Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993) – Hardcover
• The Green Mile (1996) – Hardcover
• Desperation (1996) – Hardcover
• The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (1997) – Hardcover
• The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999) – Hardcover
• On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft (2000) – Hardcover
• Black House (2001) – Hardcover
• The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (2003) – Hardcover
• The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (2004) – Hardcover
• The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (2004) – Hardcover
• Lisey's Story (2006) – Hardcover
• Under The Dome (2009) – Hardcover
• Full Dark, No Stars (2010) – Hardcover
• 11.22.63 (2011) – Hardcover
• The Dark Tower: The Wind Through The Keyhole (2012) – Hardcover
• Doctor Sleep (2013) – Hardcover
• Mr. Mercedes (2014) – Hardcover
• Revival (2014) – Hardcover
• Finders Keepers (2015) – Hardcover
• End Of Watch (2016) – Hardcover
• Gwendy's Button Box (2017) – Hardcover
• The Outsider (2018) – Hardcover
• If It Bleeds (2020) – Hardcover
• Later (2021) – Paperback
• Billy Summers (2021) – Hardcover
• Gwendy’s Final Task (2022) – Hardcover
• Fairy Tale (2022) – Hardcover
• Holly (2023) - Hardcover
• You Like It Darker (2024) - Hardcover

Worth Checking Out

Once you have the essentials, you can expand from there. A number of these are great books – they just don’t have quite the same legacy as the best known titles in the Stephen King library. Some of them are also… bad (we’re being honest today).

• Cycle Of The Werewolf (1983) – Paperback
• Thinner (1984) – Hardcover
• The Eyes Of The Dragon (1984) – Hardcover
• The Tommyknockers (1987) – Hardcover
• Insomnia (1994) – Hardcover
• Rose Madder (1995) – Hardcover
• The Regulators (1996) – Hardcover
• Bag Of Bones (1998) – Hardcover
• Hearts In Atlantis (1999) – Hardcover
• Dreamcatcher (2001) – Hardcover
• Everything's Eventual (2002) – Hardcover
• From A Buick 8 (2002) – Hardcover
• The Colorado Kid (2005) – Paperback
• Cell (2006) – Hardcover
• Blaze (2007) – Hardcover
• Duma Key (2008) – Hardcover
• Just After Sunset (2008) – Hardcover
• Joyland (2013) – Hardcover
• The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams (2015) – Hardcover
• Sleeping Beauties (2017) – Hardcover
• Elevation (2018) – Hardcover
• The Institute (2019) – Hardcover

Optional

You may not feel that you need a coffee table book with Stephen King discussing the creepiness and legacy of gargoyles, but if you’re a completist, you’ll want to have these titles in your collection.They do make for nice additions to any Stephen King library.

• Nightmares In The Sky (1988) – Hardcover
• I Shudder At Your Touch (1991) – Hardcover (Note: Features the story “The Revelations Of Becka Paulson, which isn’t published in any other hardcover)
• Storm Of The Century (1999) – Hardcover
• Secret Windows: Essays And Fiction On The Craft Of Writing (2000) – Hardcover
• Faithful (2004) – Hardcover
• Blockade Billy (2010) – Hardcover
• Hearts In Suspension (2016) – Hardcover
• Flight Or Fright (2018) – Hardcover

Stephen King Movie Adaptations

Stephen King’s relationship with Hollywood is just about as long as his history as a published novelist, with Brian Da Palma’s Carrie having been released just two years after the novel it’s based on was first published. The author has an awesome big screen legacy, and thus there are a large number of titles to populate a collection.

Must-Own Stephen King Movies

Not only have some great movies been made based on Stephen King books, but there are some downright iconic ones too – and it’s primarily those titles we are calling essential for any collection. Some titles are considered among the best horror movies of all time… and considered among the best movies of all time period:

• Carrie (1976) – Collector’s Edition 4K UHD
• The Shining (1980) – 4K UHD
• Creepshow (1982) – Collector’s Edition 4K UHD
• Cujo (1983) – 4K UHD
• The Dead Zone (1983) – Collector's Edition 4K UHD
• Christine (1983) – 4K UHD
• Children Of The Corn (1984) – Special Edition 4K UHD
• Firestarter (1984) – Collector’s Edition Blu-ray
• Silver Bullet (1985) – Collector’s Edition 4K UHD
• Stand By Me (1986) – 4K UHD
• Maximum Overdrive (1986) – Blu-ray
• Pet Sematary (1989) – 4K UHD
• Misery (1990) – 4K UHD
• Tales From The Darkside: The Movie (1990) – Collector’s Edition 4K UHD
• Needful Things (1993) – 4K UHD
• The Shawshank Redemption (1994) – 4K UHD
• Dolores Claiborne (1995) – Blu-ray
• The Green Mile (1999) – 4K UHD
• The Mist (2007) – Collector's Edition 4K UHD
• IT (2017) – 4K UHD
• IT Chapter Two (2019) – 4K UHD
• Doctor Sleep (2019) – 4K UHD
• The Boogeyman (2023) – Blu-ray

Worth Checking Out

These Stephen King movies aren’t quite up to the high standard set by the brilliant adaptations above, and in some cases more liberties are taken with the source material, but there’s still plenty of good stuff, including a few solid anthology films.

• Cat's Eye (1985) – 4K UHD
• Creepshow 2 (1987) – Special Edition Blu-ray
• The Running Man (1987) – 4K UHD
• Sleepwalkers (1992) – Collector’s Edition Blu-ray
• The Dark Half (1993) – Blu-ray (Out Of Print)
• The Mangler (1995) – Blu-ray
• The Night Flier (1998) – DVD
• Apt Pupil (1998) – DVD
• Hearts In Atlantis (2001) – DVD
• 1408 (2007) – Blu-ray
• A Good Marriage (2014) – Blu-ray
• Pet Sematary (2019) – 4K UHD
• Firestarter (2022) – Blu-ray
• Pet Sematary: Bloodlines – 4K UHD

Optional

It’s tricky to recommend these Stephen King movies because they ride so low on the quality scale, but they exist for you to get if you’re a completist.

• Graveyard Shift (1990) – Blu-ray
• Thinner (1996) – Collector's Edition Blu-ray
• Carrie (2013) – Collector's Edition 4K UHD
• Dreamcatcher (2003) – Blu-ray
• Secret Window (2004) – Blu-ray
• Dolan's Cadillac (2009) – Blu-ray
• Riding The Bullet (2004) – DVD
• Mercy (2014) – DVD
• Cell (2016) – Blu-ray
• The Dark Tower (2017) – 4K UHD

Stephen King TV Adaptations

A huge part of what makes Stephen King’s books so great is their attention to detail – and while this typically means that the tomes wind up getting pretty damn heavy, it’s also an element of his style that has led to there being a great relationship between King and the TV world. These adaptations provide the runtime real estate that regularly let adaptations be remarkably faithful to their respective source material.

Must-Own Stephen King TV Adaptations

If you’re looking for the cream of the crop material when it comes to Stephen King’s history on the small screen, you’ll find it below. Admittedly the legacy isn’t quite as iconic as the theatrical material, but we’ve still seen some fantastic adaptations for the small screen.

• Salem's Lot (1979) – Blu-ray
• It (1990) – Blu-ray
• The Stand (1994) – Blu-ray
• The Langoliers (1995) – DVD
• The Shining (1997) – Blu-ray
• Storm Of The Century (1999) – DVD (Based on original script by Stephen King)
• The Dead Zone (2002) – DVD (Complete Series)
• Kingdom Hospital (2004) – DVD
• Salem's Lot (2004) – DVD (Best version in Triple Terror Collection)
• Nightmares & Dreamscapes (2006) – DVD
• Haven (2010) – DVD (Complete Series) (Note: Each season was released on Blu-rays, but copies of Season 4, Season 5, and Season 5.1 can be difficult to find)
• Under The Dome (2013) – Blu-ray (Season 1) & Blu-ray (Season 2) & Blu-ray (Season 3)
• 11.22.63 (2016) – Blu-ray
• Mr. Mercedes (2017) – Blu-ray (Note: Region-Free Complete Series)
• Castle Rock (2018) – 4K UHD (Season 1) & Blu-ray (Season 2)
• The Outsider (2020) – Blu-ray (Season 1)
• The Stand (2020) – Blu-ray (Complete Limited Series)
• Chapelwaite (2021) Blu-ray (Note: This a Region Free release from Australia)

Worth Checking Out

Quality-wise, these TV adaptations range between “middle of the road” and “downright awful. Some of them definitely have their redeeming qualities, and will certainly be of interest to any Stephen King collector who is also a completist.

• Sometimes They Come Back (1991) – Blu-ray
• Golden Years (1991) – DVD (Based on original script by Stephen King)
• The Tommyknockers (1993) – DVD
• Quicksilver Highway (1997) – DVD
• Trucks (1997) – DVD
• Rose Red (2002) – DVD (Based on original script by Stephen King)
• Carrie (2002) – Blu-ray (Out Of Print)
• Desperation (2006) – DVD
• Children Of The Corn (2009) – Blu-ray
• Bag Of Bones (2011) – DVD
• Big Driver (2014) – DVD

Optional

If you’re looking to get absolutely every Stephen King adaptation, including the anthology shows that turned the author’s works into single episodes, this section is for you:

• The Twilight Zone (1985) – DVD (Season 1) (Note: Episode “Gramma” based on the Stephen King story of the same name)
• Tales From The Darkside (1984) – DVD (Season 1) (Note: Episode “Word Processor Of The Gods” based on the Stephen King story of the same name) & DVD (Season 4) (Note: Stephen King wrote the episode “Sorry, Right Number”)
• Monsters (1988) - DVD (Complete Series) (Note: Out Of Print, Season 3 Episode “The Moving Finger” based on the Stephen King story of the same name)
• The Outer Limits (1997) – DVD (Season 3) (Note: Out Of Print; Episode “The Revelations Of ‘Becka Paulson” based on Stephen King’s short story of the same name)
• The X-Files (1998) – Blu-ray (Season 5) (Note: Stephen King wrote the episode “Chinga”)
• Creepshow (2019) – Blu-ray (Season 1 - Episode “Gray Matter” based on the Stephen King story of the same name) & Blu-ray (Season 2 - which includes the "Creepshow Animated Special," based on the Stephen King story “Survivor Type”)

As noted up top, there are always more Stephen King books being written and adaptations being made, so any collection of the author’s works is a fluid collection – but we’ll keep this list updated with all of the latest releases as they become available. For the latest news about new developments in the world of King physical media, check out my weekly column The King Beat, which goes live here on CinemaBlend every Thursday.

Note: This feature purposefully does not include sequels that are not based on pre-existing Stephen King works or written by King himself (i.e. the Children of the Corn sequels, Pet Sematary 2, The Rage: Carrie 2, etc.).

Additionally, Gerald's Game, In The Tall Grass, 1922, and Mr. Harrigan's Phone are notably absent from this list because they are not currently available on home video, and can only be watched on Netflix. The same is true for the series Lisey’s Story, which is an Apple TV+ exclusive.

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While there have been shows that have been cancelled far too soon on Netflix, a new one has just been added to its seemingly never-ending repertoire of shows, and that is the NBC series Manifest, which will receive its fourth and final season on the streamer after the hype for it has grown exponentially in the last couple of months.

For now, your binge of the series is done, and you’re looking for something new to watch - a show that has the same vibes as Manifest. Well, look no further, because we have a nice list of great shows that will scratch that itch for you. Here are some shows like Manifest that you should watch right now.

Lost (Amazon Prime)

In this legendary drama series, Lost follows a group of people who are strangers and survive a commercial plane crash, washing up on an island in the Pacific. The survivors begin to work together to somehow stay alive, while also discovering mysteries of the island, ones that will change their lives forever.

Lost was one of the first dramas I think I ever heard of way back when, simply because it was so popular. The Lost cast is talented, the story intriguing, and it will have you binging every episode to see what the answer is to the new mysteries that pop up constantly. Let’s just not talk about the series finale. That can be a discussion for another day.

Stream Lost on Amazon Prime.

The OA (Netflix)

The OA tells the story of Prairie Johnson, an adopted young woman who suddenly resurfaces after years of being missing. She now calls herself the “OA,” otherwise known as the “Original Angel,” has scars on her back, and can now see when she was blind before.

For fans of Manifest, the mystery behind Prairie will be what keeps you going at first. You’re so intrigued by this girl that you’ll want to keep watching, but once everything is revealed, there will be so much more for you to enjoy after. I really don’t want to give much away because it’s such a great show that was cancelled far too soon. Give it a shot if haven’t already.

Stream The OA on Netflix.

Under The Dome (Pluto TV)

Under the Dome, adapted from the Stephen King novel of the same name, tells the story of the residents of a fictional town called Chester’s Mill, when suddenly, a massive, transparent, and indestructible dome is placed on their town, locking them away from the rest of world. Now, it’s up to them to figure out how to get out - and why it happened to them in the first place.

I love the mystery of this. It’s Stephen King, so you know that the story is going to be good going into this. But, for fans of Manifest, it’s a lot of the same mystery that you’ve come to enjoy, except this time with a sudden lock-down instead of people reappearing out of nowhere. It’s a race against time.

Stream Under The Dome on Pluto TV.

Travelers (Netflix)

The science fiction series, Travelers, is set in a post apocalyptic world where special operatives are tasked with preventing the collapse of society, sent back in time through their consciousness and transferred into a host body.

For fans of Manifest, this show is just the right amount of strange to keep you entertained. At first, there’s a lot of information all at once and it’s almost a little hard to understand, but Travelers is a great science fiction show, with plenty of interesting concepts that would make anyone want to keep watching. I feel like a lot of the time-traveling aspect sort of reminds me of the supernatural feelings you get while watching Manifest, which makes it perfect for fans of the show.

Stream Travelers on Netflix.

Fringe (Amazon Prime)

On Fringe, we follow the “Fringe Division” of the FBI in Boston, who are under the supervision of Homeland Security. This division is known for using “fringe science” and FBI investigative techniques to look into a series of unexplained occurrences that are usually related to something like a parallel universe.

Fringe lasted for five seasons, and honestly, I feel like it could have gone on for so many more. With J.J. Abrams as one of the executive producers, this show had so many fun mysteries, moments, and more to enjoy. For fans of Manifest, this is the perfect show if you’re craving a series like it, but want something a little different.

Stream Fringe on Amazon Prime.

The Flight Attendant (HBO Max)

In this HBO Max original series, a flight attendant who has an alcohol problem wakes up in a bed one morning next to a dead man, unaware of what happened the night before and no idea how it happened. Now, she has to try and piece the last night together bit by bit, trying to figure out who did it - and if it could have been her.

While fans of Manifest will again enjoy the mystery of this show, I feel like The Flight Attendant shines in not only its well-crafted story mixed in with comedy, but also the performance of Kaley Cuoco. She really rocks it in her role and brings it home, showing that while she was an amazing part of the Big Bang Theory cast, she can be amazingly dramatic as well.

Stream The Flight Attendant on HBO Max.

The Twilight Zone (Paramount+)

In this Jordan Peele rebooted version of the original series, The Twilight Zone takes you into different parallel universes where strange and otherwise weird occurrences happen, in a world known as “the twilight zone.”

I feel like for fans of Manifest, this is the show that made sci-fi and supernatural TV. The original version of The Twilight Zone has some amazing episodes, but the Jordan Peele reboot of the series really takes the cake for me in a couple of ways. There are some really cool stories, some simply mysterious and others supernatural, mixed in with a great guest cast. To me, this is one of the greatest dramas on Paramount+ they have, and deserved way more seasons.

Stream The Twilight Zone on Paramount Plus.

Dark (Netflix)

In this international series on Netflix, Dark takes place in the fictional town of Winden in Germany, covering the story of a child’s disappearance, as the town tries to pursue the truth. But, in doing so, they discover connections between four estranged families who are all related to a time travel conspiracy that spans generations.

Oh boy, if Manifest fans are looking for a good combination of mystery and the supernatural, than Dark is your go-to. For me, this was one of the most mentally draining shows because there were so many twists and turns, with so much lore in the background that it makes for a really detailed mystery series. But, at the same time, it’s the perfect show for people who enjoy a good mystery and want to discover a new world of strange happenings.

Stream Dark on Netflix.

The Leftovers (HBO Max)

In another supernatural mystery series, The Leftovers tells the story of what happens when 2% of the world's population suddenly disappears, leaving many behind, with everyone having lost someone and trying to figure out what happened and how to adjust to their new life.

This is definitely one of my favorites on this list, and a great choice for fans of Manifest. While 2% doesn’t sound like a lot, there are more than seven billion people on the planet, which means that 140,000,000+ people would suddenly just vanish into thin air - that sounds freaking mental when you really think about it, and they do a great job of establishing that throughout the series. It’s another one where I don’t want to give much away as to why it occurred - you just have to watch it yourself.

Stream The Leftovers on HBO Max.

The 4400 (Netflix)

In this science fiction drama, The 4400 tells the story of the titular amount of people, who are deposited by a ball of light in Washington, though they'd all disappeared in the same beam of light, either in 1946 or after. None of them have aged, and they have no idea how they got there.

For fans of Manifest, the premise of this reminds me a lot of the show, except instead of a group of passengers suddenly reappearing, it’s a group of people from various points in time suddenly reappearing, none of whom have aged. With four seasons, there’s so much to uncover and explore, and to find out who exactly these people are, and what they have become. Really, if you enjoyed Manifest, this is for sure a show you will enjoy.

Stream The 4400 on Netflix.

Manifest has really made me so interested in mystery shows, and, honestly, I know that now it’s one of the best shows on Netflix to binge. Since we all have to wait for Season 4, which won’t be premiering on any 2021 fall TV schedule, at least now we have some options to keep us entertained until then.

While he isn’t quite at Stan Lee’s level, Stephen King is certainly a pro when it comes to the art of the cameo. His works have been getting turned into movies and television for decades now, and while he’s not in every single adaptation of his books, he is featured in a considerable number of them – not to mention films and shows that simply invite him on set to make an appearance. He can sometimes be a bit hard to find, as his roles are occasionally of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it variety, but in that realm I am now here to help you out.

Delving into the author’s filmography, I’ve dug up every live-action Stephen King cameo in features and TV (you won’t find his voice-only parts on The Simpsons or Frasier here), and organized them into this handy chronological guide. Let’s take a trip through time, Constant Readers!

Knightriders – Hoagie Man (1981)

As you’ll find reading this feature, the vast majority of cameos that Stephen King makes are in movies or television shows he is associated with via either source material or direct creative involvement, but it’s funny that his first ever doesn’t fall into either of those categories. Director George A. Romero later became a frequent collaborator with King, working together on Creepshow and The Dark Half, but their seminal shared credit is Knightriders, which sees King briefly appear as a hoagie-eating audience member at a motorcycle dueling event. (Fun bonus: the woman he is sitting next to in the shot is his wife Tabitha King.)

Creepshow – Jordy Verrill (1982)

Stephen King’s appearances in movies and TV are typically limited to a single scene, but in one segment of Creepshow he is literally the star of the show. King plays the titular lead in "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill," which sees him as a backwoods hillbilly who gets infected by a rapidly-growing, plant-like virus that he catches while investigating a meteorite crash site.

Maximum Overdrive – Man At Bank ATM (1986)

Maximum Overdrive remains the only thing that Stephen King ever directed, but he certainly made the most of it by also giving himself a fun cameo. King actually says what is the first line of dialogue of the movie, complaining when the ATM at his local bank starts calling him an “asshole” – a set up for all of the mechanical mayhem the film eventually unfurls.

Creepshow 2 – Truck Driver (1987)

Bit of trivia for you: Creepshow 2 marks the only time Stephen King has been in a sequel to one of his own movies. The author shows up in the segment titled “The Hitch-hiker,” appearing shortly after Lois Chiles’ Annie Lansing accidentally hits the eponymous character with her car and flees. King plays a truck driver who comes across the scene of the bloody crime, but he’s hardly affected by it, bluntly commenting that it’s a thing that happens all the time.

Pet Sematary – Minister (1989)

Between books like Carrie, Desperation, Revival, The Stand, and more, Stephen King has demonstrated a very complicated relationship with religion throughout his career, and that only serves to make his cameo in Pet Sematary that much more notable. His role is brief, appearing as a minister at the funeral for Susan Blommaert's Missy Dandridge, but the sight of him wearing those robes and holding that bible sticks in your mind.

Golden Years – Bus Driver (1991)

It was in 1991 that Stephen King made his small screen acting debut, playing a bus driver in the fifth episode (“Second Chance”) of the first TV series he created, Golden Years. It’s a very brief role, featured in a scene where fugitive Harlan Williams (Keith Szarabajka) is trying to keep his wife and daughter (Frances Sternhagen, Felicity Huffman) safe by sending them on a trip to Chicago. He has a bit of a mouth on him, complaining about picking up “side of the roaders,” but he gets put in his place with a harsh stare from Huffman.

Sleepwalkers – Cemetery Caretaker (1992)

This is a fun one, because the cameo by Stephen King in Sleepwalkers is really a cameo-palooza. The author appears in one scene as a cemetery caretaker who is worried about being seen as liable for an assault that has been committed on his property, and not only is it a funny performance, but the two characters he bothers with his grousing are played by horror directors John Landis (An American Werewolf In London) and Clive Barker (Hellraiser).

The Stand – Teddy Weizak (1994)

The original miniseries adaptation of The Stand marks another instance where King plays a legitimate character instead of just making a cameo – but it’s still not that big of a part. As Teddy Weizak, he’s the one who ends up transporting Laura San Giacomo's Nadine Cross to the Boulder Free Zone, though it is noteworthy that he doesn’t suffer the same fate as Teddy in the Stephen King book (who dies in the explosion created by Nadine and Harold Lauder).

The Langoliers – Tom Holby (1995)

Throughout The Langoliers, Bronson Pinchot's Craig Toomy is constantly ranting and raving about his need to get to Boston so that he can meet with his business associates – and while he never actually makes it to that meeting, we do learn through a hallucination that his boss has more than a passing resemblance to one of the greatest horror writers of all time. It’s not a big part, as Toomy’s vision of Tom Holby is quickly replaced by the character’s domineering, abusive father, but you have to love that intense smile on Stephen King’s face.

Thinner – Pharmacist (1996)

Director Tom Holland didn’t waste much time between Stephen King adaptations in the mid-90s, going from making the Langoliers miniseries right into making the movie Thinner, and the filmmaker brought the author into both productions. In the 1996 film, King appears as a pharmacist named Jonathan Bangor, whom Michael Constantine's Tadzu Lempke goes to so that he can get ointment for a lesion on his nose.

The Shining – Gage Creed (1997)

While he may share the name of the villain he created in Pet Sematary, Stephen King’s Gage Creed in Mick Garris’ The Shining miniseries is not actually an evil two-year-old who is brought back from the dead. Instead, that’s just a cute Easter egg, as King instead plays a ghostly conductor leading the orchestra during a party at the Overlook Hotel that Steven Weber’s Jack Torrance wanders through during his descent into madness.

Storm Of The Century – Lawyer In Ad (1999)

Stephen King recently called Storm Of The Century his personal favorite among all of the small screen works he has worked on/been associated with over the course of his career, and it also happens to feature one of his odder cameos. He is featured as a lawyer in a commercial that is playing on television, but what makes it particularly weird is that the unit playing the ad in the scene was previously smashed by a basketball. It’s bizarre, but it’s also noteworthy that it’s not the only King-related project where the ad has been featured…

Rose Red – Pizza Delivery Guy (2002)

It’s always nice to have a calm before a storm in a horror story, and that’s something that Stephen King directly facilitates in the first half of the miniseries Rose Red. As the characters assemble in the titular haunted mansion, King shows up with the classic party starter: a few pizza pies and two six-packs of soda. (He's also featured in the faux documentary that preceded the release of the TV miniseries, titled Unlocking Rose Red: The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, though it's pretty easy to tell that his appearance is just repurposed interview footage)

Kingdom Hospital – Johnny B. Goode/Lawyer In Ad (2004)

There is a running gag throughout Kingdom Hospital Season 1 that finds Bruce Davison's Dr. Stegman frustrated that he can never find the titular institution’s head of maintenance – the mysterious Johnny B. Goode (named after the Chuck Berry song). It’s in the finale that the character is finally revealed, played by Stephen King, and his appearance becomes a great bit that only enhances Stegman’s exponentially growing frustration. (As a bonus, the scene is also preceded by the lawyer ad from Storm Of The Century, as both projects were directed by Craig R. Baxley).

Fever Pitch – Himself (2005)

Given that Stephen King is a lifelong Boston Red Sox, it’s only right that he has a role in the romantic comedy that uses the team’s 2004 World Championship victory as a backdrop. The author doesn’t actually have a role in the movie, as he just featured as himself throwing out a first pitch at Fenway Park, but it counts!

Sons Of Anarchy – Bachman (2010)

Playing a character with a name inspired by his famous alter-ego, Stephen King appears in the third episode of the third season of Sons Of Anarchy, titled “Caregiver.” Appearing late in the story, he is introduced as a “cleaner” who has skills when it comes to disposing of a dead body. Unlike Winston Wolf from Pulp Fiction, Bachman is a total creep, and King delivers a great performance.

Under The Dome – Diner Patron (2014)

Stephen King recognizes that Under The Dome went “off the rails” as it was working to expand on the author’s original text, but King’s cameo has the fortunate timing of preceding the messiness. You can spot him in the Season 2 premiere of the series, the episode titled “Heads Will Roll,” where he is featured as a diner patron who requests a cup of coffee from Britt Robertson's Angie McAlister.

Mr. Mercedes – Line Cook (2017)

Clearly most Stephen King cameos have been featured for comedic effect, but his appearance in the sixth episode of Mr. Mercedes’ first season, “People In The Rain,” is all about contributing to the horror. The scene in question features Harry Treadaway's Brady Hartsfield having a violent fantasy while at a business lunch, imagining that he kills everyone in the restaurant where he is eating, and one of his victims is revealed to be a familiar-looking line cook murdered while serving a salad.

IT Chapter Two – Shopkeeper (2019)

Finally we have the most recent Stephen King appearance/cameo, and it also happens to be one of his best. Derry, Maine is a place with no shortage of weirdos, and the author plays a great one in IT Chapter Two, where he is featured as the proprietor of the Second Hand Rose pawn shop. When James McAvoy’s Bill Denbrough comes in after seeing his old bicycle, Silver, in the window, King’s character does nothing but give the famous writer grief – first by hiking up the price of the bike, and then rejecting an autograph by complaining that he doesn’t like the ending of one of Denbrough’s books.

That marks all of the author’s live-action appearances to date, but with so many upcoming Stephen King movies and TV shows, it’s not hard to imagine that this list will continue to grow in the not-too-distant future.

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With every new streaming platform, there are several great dramas for people to turn to when they want to spice up their lives with the problems of fictional characters. Paramount+ is no stranger to that, even though it’s sort of new to the scene. Already, it sports awesome shows, with some of the best dramas out there. While you wait for your new shows to premiere from the 2021 TV schedule, streaming is the way to go.

We have shows that have been going on for what feels like forever, such as NCIS and Star Trek, and others that still have dedicated fans, like Blue Bloods and The Good Wife. No matter what you’re into, Paramount+ is sure to have some sort of drama for you to wrap your head around. These are some of the best that the streaming service has to offer.

NCIS Shows

If you haven’t heard of NCIS at this point, I don’t know what rock you’ve been hiding under.

NCIS is one of the quintessential cop dramas out there. The phrase stands for Naval Criminal Investigation Service, and the series has been going on for years, since 2003.

Because of the popularity of this military and police procedural show, there have been a couple of spinoffs in this franchise that have also been put onto Paramount+ for your viewing, including NCIS: New Orleans and NCIS: Los Angeles. For all you procedural fans, this is most certainly the one for you.

Stream the NCIS franchise on Paramount+ here.

All Rise

Moving onto a more recent entry in this list, All Rise follows the stories, cases, and personal lives of a judge, a persecutor, and a public defender in the beautiful world of Los Angeles, and all the crime that comes along with it.

Obviously, if you’re already a fan of legal shows like Your Honor and Better Call Saul, this drama will be right up your alley. Even if you’ve never given series like this a chance, I’d say keep an eye out for this show. It’s an intriguing look at the legal system, which does a great of of illuminating and entertaining.

Stream All Rise on Paramount+ here.

The Good Wife

Another legal and political drama, The Good Wife, kept a steady reputation as one of the best shows on TV for seven seasons. Produced by Ridley Scott, this show covers the story of Alicia Florrick, the wife of Cook County State’s Attorney, who returns to her career in law after her husband is found guilty of a public sex and political corruption scandal.

The show received critical acclaim and was nominated for multiple Primetime Emmy Awards for how fantastic it was. Sometimes shows like this need to be viewed to really grab you, and once you start that first episode, it’s like a drug. You’ll find yourself rooting for Alicia in ways that you never thought you would – truly worth the time to view.

Stream The Good Wife on Paramount+ here.

Clarice

Think of one of the best films you’ve ever seen – did you think of The Silence of the Lambs? Because I did, and that’s exactly what Clarice is based on. We return to the world of Clarice Starling a year after the events of Silence of the Lambs, as we dive deep into the personal, untold story of the detective.

This series has everything from the movie that you loved and more, with that same psychological aspect that made Silence of the Lambs so intriguing in the first place. Along with that, you’ll get some prime hunting down of other serial killers and sexual predators, in a high-stakes world all around Washington D.C. If you loved the original, you’re sure to love the show as well.

Stream Clarice on Paramount+ here.

Star Trek Shows

Alright, there are far too many to tell you the individual plot of each Star Trek show, but know that there are so many for you to explore. The Star Trek franchise – which has been around since the 1960’s – is all about going “boldly where no man has gone before,” through the channel of space and (sometimes) time. Trust me, there are several stories which have been told throughout the years.

From the Star Trek franchise, you could watch the original Star Trek, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Discovery and so much more. While the series is rooted in science-fiction, there is still plenty of drama for you to enjoy. With each of the new shows that this franchise has turned out over the years, you’ll have entertainment for months.

Stream the Star Trek franchise on Paramount+ here.

The Equalizer

Moving onto another show based on a movie, The Equalizer is a brand-new TV series inspired by the original series of the same name from the 1980s. The show, now starring the fabulous Queen Latifah, tells the story of a vigilante who wants to help with social justice and pursues cases where the people aren’t helped by the law – which is where the “equalizer” steps in to help them out.

After the success of the series (and films starring Denzel Washington), it was only a matter of time before they decided to reboot the idea, and Queen Latifah holds up in the main role, along with several other shining costars alongside her. The crime-drama has only has a few episodes so far, so it’s easy to catch up, and who doesn’t love a good vigilante story?

Stream The Equalizer on Paramount+ here.

Blue Bloods

Blue Bloods focuses on the Reagan family, a group of individuals who largely work in law enforcement. The father is the New York City Police Commissioner, followed by family members that play other pivotal roles in the daily ongoings of the NYC Police Department.

With eleven seasons to binge, there’s plenty of you to enjoy on this popular cop show. Whether you’re a city dweller or someone who’s really into the law, there are parts of this show that will satisfy any viewer. Tom Selleck, Donnie Wahlberg, and several others star in this popular show, so there’s also plenty of talent to watch during the long-running series.

Stream Blue Bloods on Paramount+ here.

Twin Peaks

This is one of my all-time favorite dramas, and it's been popular for such a long time that it’s clear others feel the same way. Twin Peaks, while short-lived, has a cult following for a reason. The series tells the tale of a murder investigation of a homecoming queen, in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, Washington.

While it sounds like just some normal everyday crime show, there are so many elements to Twin Peaks that stand out. For example, every episode is a standard day in the show, so each season only chronicles a month – therefore, as the viewer, you really get to dive deep into these investigations and see all of the horror, mystery, and killers that appear during these cases. It’s super interesting, extremely entertaining, and worth the watch for any crime fan, even if it's a short series.

Stream Twin Peaks on Paramount+ here.

Madam Secretary

Back to the political spectrum, we take a look at a role that isn’t usually covered that often from the White House in scripted TV – the secretary of the United States. Madam Secretary is the story of a secretary of state, and the internal struggles that she has while trying to drive diplomacy, and the politics of not just the country, but the office as well.

I know that there are so many political shows out there, but this was is super complex. It really digs deep into this position and the troubles that anyone in the White House can face. I feel like in the last couple of years, we’ve all had our fair share of politics, but for a show that was around for six seasons, it’s clear they must have been doing something right. The character development is great, the stories interesting, and the politics aren’t too hard to understand for someone who’s new to shows like this.

Stream Madam Secretary on Paramount+ here.

The Stand

Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, The Stand is basically what we’re living right now – through a pandemic.

Nah, I’m just joking, but that is a main plot-point of this miniseries. In this show, we see the beginning of a pandemic that is a result of a mishap in a military biological research station – this, in turn, leads to the people who are left fighting a true battle of good against evil.

With this great show, we see awesome actors like James Marsden and Odessa Young take the lead, really providing us with a rich story – I mean, it’s Stephen King, the same guy who wrote The Shining. We all know that this story is going to be great. There’s no better time than now to watch it.

Stream The Stand on Paramount+ here.

The Twilight Zone

While the new Twilight Zone that Jordan Peele hosts is fun and all, there’s nothing that can quite compare to the original The Twilight Zone from the ’60s. The Twilight Zone is an anthology, often dealing with strange and unusual events and the people who get caught up in those events.

While the show can lean a little bit more into the horror and mystery aspect, the episodes always end with some sort of lesson being taught. Even though some of the issues can be a bit dated (this show did debut in 1959), many of the stories are still mysterious enough to be thoroughly entertaining.

Stream The Twilight Zone on Paramount+ here.

Under The Dome

Another Stephen King adaption here, Under The Dome, tells the story of a small town which is suddenly trapped under a glass dome. No one knows why, but it’s up to the townspeople to figure out exactly how to get out – and why it might have happened to them in the first place.

I know that this sounds a little bit like the plot of The Simpsons Movie, but I promise you that the story of Under The Dome is much more fleshed out and entertaining – and a lot less comical. This is the epitome of what a drama should be, with a nice science-fiction twist.

Stream Under the Dome on Paramount+ here.

Jeez. I’m already biting my nails imagining the stress I would feel watching all these dramas – but, I suppose that’s the fun part about it. You can sit on the couch and view it all on Paramount+, without having to deal with any of the consequences that the characters did.

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Marvel, which has long since capitalized on movie theaters for a little bit over a decade now, is starting to really dip its toes into the television industry with all these new programs coming out. While there have been Marvel shows before, nothing has quite captured the minds of fans like WandaVision, the latest Disney+ show that explores the lives of Wanda Maximoff and Vision from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, seemingly living a normal sitcom life in different decades, but with dark mysteries behind the scenes.

The show has become a megahit for Marvel. But just because WandaVision is a great piece of television, that doesn’t mean that there are plenty of other spots out there that are just as fun. With how much is referenced in the new Marvel show, several shows exist out there for the regular WandaVision fan to watch and have fun. So, if any of you are looking for a new (or old) show or movie to watch, check out these options.

Bewitched (IMDBTV)

This famous TV sitcom from the '60s heavily influenced the second episode of WandaVision. The entire show is about a witch who marries an ordinary mortal man and wants to live a normal life as a regular housewife, keeping her powers hidden from the world.

The show was very popular, running for eight seasons, and is considered one of the greats of the decade, so it’s clear where WandaVision got so much of its spunk from. If you were a fan of the time period of the '60s, along with Wanda’s powers in the Disney+ hit, Bewitched is certainly a show for you to watch.

Stream it on IMDB TV through Amazon here*. *

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Netflix)

While I could put the original Sabrina the Teenage Witch on here, I feel like the more updated version in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina fits the tone of WandaVision more. The story of this show is all about Sabrina Spellman, a young witch who must decide between a world with her mortal friends and immense power with her abilities, but of course, drama ensues.

For fans of WandaVision, the powers that Sabrina acquires have relative callbacks to the Disney+ show. Sabrina becomes a powerful witch and can eventually split up realities, create two versions of her, and even control the minds of others. It may be a little darker than WandaVision at times, but the premise is still there.

Stream it on Netflix here.

Black Mirror (Netflix)

I love Black Mirror for so many reasons. This anthology show that originally came from England tells different stories each time around, creating mind-boggling realities and twists. Many of these stories are considered “what-if” scenarios for what could happen with the world, set in alternative universes in the present day or future.

The episodes are usually dark and always have a meaning, but the drama and the mysteries that unfold are worth the watch. There have been many callbacks to this show sort of being the present-day version of The Twilight Zone, and there’s a good reason why. It’s been nominated for multiple Emmys (having won one recently for their special, Bandersnatch), and is one of the best shows out there. For fans of WandaVision’s head-turning twists, this is for you.

Stream it on Netflix here.

Shutter Island (Netflix)

There’s a reason why Shutter Island is a classic film, and Leonardo DiCaprio does a fantastic job with his co-star Mark Ruffalo (you know, the Hulk himself). The story follows U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigating the escape of a murderess in an asylum with his partner, but the woman has seemed to vanish without a trace, with plenty of dark secrets hidden in the island as well.

While it’s not Scorsese’s best work, in my opinion, it’s still a great time for fans of the neo-noir psychological film genre. It really messes with your head and makes you think, and that’s why it would be perfect for WandaVision fans. The mystery behind the breakout, the hidden past of Shutter Island – it’s a fun time from beginning to end. Really any movie with a good murder mystery would be perfect for fans of the Marvel show.

Stream it on Netflix here.

Vanilla Sky (IMDBTV)

I know that this is a bit of an “avant-garde” pick but hear me out. Vanilla Sky covers the story of David, someone who has his life drastically changed when he is in a car accident that severely disfigures his face. But soon, his life starts to take many different turns and changes, creating a whirlwind of strange happenings that he can’t explain.

Let’s just say that it sort of parodies Wanda’s life. She is currently creating a different reality where she can live happily. And to an extent, Vanilla Sky offers that escape as well, to someone who wants to escape the stresses of his life. But I won’t give away anymore. You’re going to have to watch it if you want to find out.

Stream it on IMDBTV through Amazon here.

I Love Lucy (Hulu)

Think of the very first episode of WandaVision, and that is the entirety of I Love Lucy. The famous sitcom follows the life of Lucille and Ricky Ricardo, the normal suburban family that gets into plenty of hijinks along the way, with their relationship and marriage being the primary focus of the series.

I Love Lucy is known to be one of the best TV series of all time for its impact on the TV industry and was the most-watched show during its time, one that was only matched in Nielsen ratings with The Andy Griffith Show and Seinfeld. The comedy may be a bit dated since the show did come out in the 1950s, but there’s no denying its significance in media as a whole.

Stream it on Hulu here.

Family Ties (CBS All Access)

While the eighties episode of WandaVision had plenty of references to other popular 80’s sitcoms like Full House (which Elizabeth Olsen’s sisters starred in) and Growing Pains, there were several hints tied to Family Ties as well. This is what’s classified as a classic '80s sitcom, starring the Keaton family, focusing on the cultural divide between the children and the parents when it comes to politics, money, and everything else, but they’re always there for each other no matter what because they are family.

Not only is this a great sitcom to binge-watch considering the episodes are not that long, you’ll get plenty of that classic 1980s comedy that you saw previewed for a little bit in WandaVision.

Family Ties also stars plenty of big actors and actresses, with these roles being a big start in their career. Michael J. Fox has a main role as the eldest son, Alex, in the Keaton family, and Justine Bateman (the sister to Jason Bateman) stars as Mallory, his sister. Besides that, there are plenty of other big celebrities that make appearances and have roles in the show before they were big-timers, such as Courteney Cox (Friends), Tom Hanks (Toy Story, Forrest Gump), Geena Davis (Beetlejuice, Thelma and Louise) and more.

Stream it on CBS All Access here.

P.S. I Love You (HBO Max)

I suppose you’re probably wondering how a romance movie can relate to WandaVision, but there’s actually a strong connection to what the main character of this goes through. In P.S. I Love You, the main character, Holly, loses her husband to a brain tumor and doesn’t know how she can go on without him, but he, even after his death, tries to be there for her.

Is the film sad and a bit cliché? Yes. But I can’t help but feel that same attachment towards it like I do with Wanda going through what she is. She has just lost the love of her life so unexpectedly in the Marvel movies and doesn’t know how to deal with it, so she decides to create her own world where she doesn’t face her depression and instead wants to live in her own little bubble. Honestly, Wanda could learn a little from this movie, showing what can be done if one allows themselves to grieve.

Stream it on HBO Max here.

Under The Dome (Pluto TV)

Stephen King has always been a master of suspense, mystery, and horror, and that’s why this show is perfect for viewers of WandaVision. Under The Dome tells the story of this small town, called Chester’s Mill, which is suddenly cut off from the rest of the world when a large, transparent, and indestructible dome comes over their homes. Now, the residents must find a way to stay alive, and try to find a way to somehow find out what the dome is and see if there’s a way to make it go away.

If you want mystery, this is most certainly the drama. There’s so much hidden, with new secrets and turns at every corner for viewers to explore. For fans who enjoy the unraveling of what is happening with WandaVision and trying to piece together everything that is occurring, this show will most certainly keep you interested until the last episode. The show only went for three seasons, so it wouldn’t be that hard to binge-watch.

Stream it on Pluto TV here.

Marvel Movies/TV Shows (Disney+)

I mean, I have to put these here. We’re all fans of Marvel, obviously, but there are plenty of specific shows and movies that are in the Marvel universe that you can watch that will surely keep you just as entertained as WandaVision has.

The first one I’d suggest is Doctor Strange, as Elizabeth Olsen (who plays Wanda), is going to have a main role in the upcoming sequel, so if you’re a fan of the character, I’d suggest catching up. In regards to Marvel TV shows, check out Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, which follows the life of S.H.I.E.L.D agents and the cases they follow. If you’re looking for a more woman-led Marvel show like WandaVision, look no further than Agent Carter, a show that follows the life of Peggy Carter, a secret agent in the 1940’s.

Stream them on Disney + here.

Even though WandaVision is super enjoyable, the season will be coming to an end on March 5th, so we’re going to need something else to watch in the meantime before The Falcon and the Winter Soldier premieres. What are you going to be streaming?

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I do not believe that CBS All Access would call it a stroke of luck that they chose to release The Stand in a year like 2020. Yet, you do have to admit, the health concerns the world has been facing lately have made the plot of the apocalyptic miniseries far more relevant than they might have expected. Of course, this was not the first time that Stephen King had a vision for the end of the world that was later adapted for television.

In fact, this new, nine-episode update of the 1978 novel about a battle of biblical proportions that ensues from a cataclysmic virus is not even its first transition to the screen. In 1994, ABC broadcast an Emmy-winning, four-part miniseries based on The Stand, led by Academy Award nominee Gary Sinise as Stu Redman - a role played by James Marsden in 2020. Not to mention, there are a few other works by Stephen King that have found success on television, and even a few that you could say took inspiration from his ideas of what the apocalypse might look like.

That being said, if you have been captivated by the miniseries’ infectious storyline and cannot stand to wait another week to cure your excitement, I have few suggestions that should be a helpful remedy while you wait for the next episode. In my opinion, the following 11 TV shows are just what I would prescribe to a devoted follower of The Stand, starting with another televised update of a Stephen King classic that was previously adapted for the screen.

The Mist (Netflix)

As they are already under conflict in the wake of a brutal crime, a family must band together with others when a mysterious, otherworldly threat begins terrorizing their small town, hidden behind a mysterious fog.

Why It Is A Good Option For Fans Of The Stand: Frank Darabont stayed relatively faithful to Stephen King’s 1980 novella The Mist for his 2007 feature-length adaptation (save that brutal, polarizing ending), but this 10-episode series, originally airing on Paramount Network (called Spike at the time), expands on the story of ordinary people trying to survive extraordinary circumstances, but in a more Lovecraftian way than The Stand tends to go.

Stream The Mist on Netflix here.

The Walking Dead (Netflix)

A former Georgia cop (Andrew Lincoln), his family, and others struggle to protect themselves while navigating a world ruled by the undead.

Why It Is A Good Option For Fans Of The Stand: While not inspired by the work of Stephen King, his aforementioned frequent collaborator, Frank Darabont, did originally develop this blockbuster AMC hit. It's based on Robert Kirkiman’s popular Image comic book series The Walking Dead, and, after 10 seasons and counting of chilling suspense, brutal bloodshed, and maddening civil unrest, it's just about the ultimate in end-of-the-world television these days.

Stream The Walking Dead on Netflix here.

Falling Skies (HBO Max)

A Boston University professor of military history (Noah Wyle) becomes the reluctant leader of a new war against malevolent, extra-terrestrial visitors after surviving a deadly attack.

Why It Is A Good Option For Fans Of The Stand: What The Walking Dead did for the zombie apocalypse on television, Falling Skies, from executive producer Steven Spielberg, came pretty close to matching for alien invasion stories with its chilling, five-season chronicle of how the human race falls prey to monstrous creatures before rising above them.

Stream Falling Skies on HBO Max here.

Under The Dome (CBS All Access)

Home is no longer a safe haven for the citizens of Chester’s Mill, Maine, after a transparent and impenetrable force field suddenly covers the entire community, leaving its residents confused, desperate, unable to communicate with outsiders, and running low on supplies.

Why It Is A Good Option For Fans Of The Stand: Based on a more recent novel by Stephen King, Under the Dome, like The Stand, comments on the physical and psychological challenges of the human condition in the midst of chaos. However, instead of on a global scale, this three-season series sees one small town suffering its own, personal apocalypse, inexplicably cut off from the outside world.

Stream Under the Dome on CBS All Access here.

Snowpiercer (TNT)

A former Chicago detective (Hamilton star Daveed Diggs) is enlisted by a ruthless authoritarian (Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly) to investigate a murder aboard a self-sustaining bullet train holding the last of mankind after a global snowstorm leaves the rest of the world uninhabitable.

Why It Is A Good Option For Fans Of The Stand: Based on a French graphic novel that would also inspire Bong Joon-ho’s acclaimed 2014 film, Snowpiercer sees surviving passengers attempting a post-apocalyptic recreation of society within the titular public transport. They develop a class system that puts the rich in the front, the poor at the caboose, and everybody at each other’s throats.

Stream Snowpiercer on TNT here.

Jericho (Netflix, CBS All Access)

A once idyllic Midwestern town must figure out how to reconstruct their community and reestablish communication with the outside world after witnessing a nuclear explosion just miles away.

Why It Is A Good Option For Fans Of The Stand: Like the aforementioned entries in our list, Jericho (starring a pre-Riverdale Skeet Ulrich) focuses on regular people dealing with similar post-apocalyptic circumstances in an isolated environment. But, the cause of their problem and its lingering issues is something far more realistic and, thus, even more frightening.

Stream Jericho on Netflix here or on CBS All Access here.

Lost (Hulu, IMDb TV)

The survivors of a plane crash are left to rely on whatever they have left to stay alive, sane, and civil with one another on a remote island plagued by mysterious phenomena that only worsen their struggle.

Why It Is A Good Option For Fans Of The Stand: While the rest of the world is just fine, the personal worlds of the cast of Lost end in the pilot, before things only get stranger for them, on this hit drama from executive producers J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof.

Stream Lost on Hulu here or on IMDb TV here.

Carnivale (HBO Max)

A young man on the the run from the law (Nick Stahl) takes a job at a traveling sideshow while a devout California preacher (Clancy Brown) grows desperate to serve God - each unwitting to the staggering, revolutionary conflict they are each destined to lead with the use of their unusual abilities.

Why It Is A Good Option For Fans Of The Stand: Excluding elements of a post-apocalyptic tale, the Emmy-winning HBO period drama Carnivale has plenty in common with The Stand, specifically an emerging, fantastic battle between good and evil that takes inspiration from biblical text.

Stream Carnivàle on HBO Max here.

The Dead Zone (Tubi, IMDb TV)

A science teacher (Anthony Michael Hall) awakens from a coma after six years to find that he suddenly has the ability to see the future simply by touching a certain item.

Why It Is A Good Option For Fans Of The Stand: One of the most iconic characters from The Stand is Mother Abagail Freemantle (played by Whoopi Goldberg in the new miniseries) for her prophetic visions, much like the precognitive gifts of Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone - an acclaimed USA series also based on a Stephen King novel, which was previously adapted into a 1983 feature film starring Christopher Walken and directed by David Cronenberg.

Stream The Dead Zone on Tubi here or on IMDb TV here.

Castle Rock (Hulu)

Ordinary people, such as a disgraced lawyer and a head nurse at the local hospital, discover the extraordinary causes behind the series of tragic events that their quaint Maine community is infamous for.

Why It Is A Good Option For Fans Of The Stand: Speaking of precognitive abilities, you may notice that to be a recurring theme among many characters created by Stephen King, whose work inspired Hulu’s horror anthology series Castle Rock (named after a town of the author’s invention). The second season borrows a lot from certain elements of The Stand, as well as Misery, Salem’s Lot, and plenty more I might need to look for on a rewatch.

Stream Castle Rock on Hulu here.

Good Omens (Amazon Prime)

The unlikely friendship between an angel (Michael Sheen) and a demon (David Tennant) turns into an alliance to prevent the end of the world years after the birth of the antichrist.

Why It Is A Good Option For Fans Of The Stand: Following a considerable amount of doom and gloom among the previous entries in our list (even the ones that do not involve Armageddon), a good way to round-out this ultimate binge for The Stand fans is Good Omens. The Amazon Prime original miniseries is based on the hilarious book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, which puts a much lighter spin on the end of days by imagining how forces of good and evil could co-exist.

Stream Good Omens on Amazon Prime here.

What do you think? Could you use a laugh after putting up with the apocalypse for a year… I mean, hours. Or, is watching others suffer worse fates than you your primary source of entertainment? Let us know in the comments and be sure to check back for additional information and updates on The Stand, as well as even more of our own recommendations about what is available to stream right now, here on CinemaBlend.

Even though Stephen King has nearly always been more than merely a "horror writer," he will forever be linked with the genre, since he's responsible for dozens of the most iconic horror novels in all of literature. Of course, part of the fun in being a King fan is witnessing the endless line of film and TV adaptations inspired by his long list of titles. Not that it's always fun, with more than a few King-based projects sharing very little of what made the source material special in the first place. And arguably the biggest offender on that front in recent years was CBS' Under the Dome series.

To be sure, Stephen King has expressed some of his feelings about Under the Dome in the past, with his reaction basically amounting to disapproving meh-ness. But because King actively embraces as much pop culture as he can experience, that disapproving meh-ness puts Under the Dome in limited company, and makes the author's biting criticisms all the more hilarious when they surface. (It's way harder to argue against his views than it is to argue against Under the Dome's rapid distancing from the vibes and plots of the novel after three seasons.)

In anticipation of CBS All Access' upcoming The Stand miniseries, King spoke with the New York Times about the long list of TV adaptations made from his works, and therein confirmed his mind definitely hasn't changed recently about Under the Dome.

I'm giving his use of "great" a glimmer of side-eye, but I'll grant him the notion that at least the first episodes were somewhat surreal and pulpy as well as being schmaltzy, so it seemed like there were more exciting places to go. As opposed to realizing in hindsight that the series was already peaking at that point. Like the first bites of meatloaf are usually the best, before the meal cools off and becomes a protein sludge next to the butter-less mashed potatoes. Dammit, I think this metaphor has itself gone off the rails.

With his next words about Under the Dome, Stephen King laid out possibly the best working definition of passive disappointment I've ever heard.

Shall we take bets now on whether Stephen King ended that sentence with "shit" or "fuck?" Maybe he went off the beaten path and said he didn't give "half a woodchuck's dick" or something. This guessing game is arguably more sensical than a variety of different Under the Dome scenes involving the pink stars, so we're good.

Last year, Stephen King challenged Netflix to produce a reboot of Under the Dome, but one that gives viewers an adaptation that's at least partly faithful to the source material. If Disney+ ever got into the Stephen King business, I'm sure they'd order up at least 14 new TV shows and movies in an instant.

In the long run, Under the Dome likely isn't the worst live-action Stephen King adaptation, not in a world where The Tommyknockers and Maximum Overdrive exist without reboots. But make sure to check out The Stand on CBS All Access when it premieres on Thursday, December 17. And in the meantime, head to our Fall TV premiere schedule and our Winter and Spring 2021 TV guide to see what new and returning shows are on the way soon.

Stephen King has had his work adapted many times in both movies and television. Unsurprisingly, King has thoughts on the ones that went better than others. Let us hope that the upcoming remake of The Stand falls into the “better” category, as there is a TV adaptation that the author thought went badly. King opened up about which show “went off the rails.”

This is not the first time that Stephen King has had some things to say about this particular TV adaptation. The show in question is, of course, Under the Dome. It premiered on CBS back in 2013, lasting three seasons before it got cancelled. Last year, King made headlines when he called on Netflix to reboot the series. More than a year later, he is providing further insight into why he wants one.

It all has to do with the show lacking a strong dose of reality regarding that titular dome. Yes, the same one that came down in what turned out to be Under the Dome’s last season. It took a lot of episodes to get to that point, though, and Stephen King was not okay with the TV show’s unrealistic portrayal of the aftermath of that dome drop. King told The Washington Post:

Stephen King could not get over the abandoned sense of realism where Under the Dome was concerned. The author indicates that the only struggle the citizens of Chester’s Mill encountered was being cut off from the outside world. Otherwise, they had their needs met, including looking pretty spiffy, according to King. Reality did catch up with the cast while filming. Thanks to a malfunctioning cocoon, one of the show’s stars nearly died.

That said, Stephen King did his best, sending a “tweet” from his typewriter. The show got one season after the iconic author wrote the Season 2 premiere, but the damage may have been done in Season 1. Why a plot point could not have arisen to explain why things got more “real” is another question entirely.

Hopefully, Under the Dome can be remade in a way that can please Stephen King. It has been five years since the show went off the air, which falls within a reboot-friendly time-frame. Regardless of his frustration with CBS’s Under the Dome, he has another property headed to its neighborhood.

The Stand premieres on Thursday, December 17, on CBS All Access. It is one of the many new shows premiering this fall. Until then, you can stream several Stephen King adaptations on Netflix alongside a lot of new 2020 content, and be sure to vote in our Under the Dome poll below!

This poll is no longer available.

Stephen King has something he would like to pitch. The horror author is ready for one of his previously adapted works to get the reboot treatment. What show does he want to have come back? That would be none other than Under the Dome. King’s 2009 novel had received the adaptation treatment via a CBS series that premiered in June 2013.

The Under the Dome TV series ran for three seasons and 39 episodes before concluding in 2015. Well, Stephen King is ready to bring the show back with a twist. He's calling for a total overhaul and he has an idea for which outlet should handle bringing it to bear. Check out King’s tweet below:

Stephen King seems to be alluding to his feelings about how CBS’ Under the Dome series adapted his book. He points out that if Netflix were to bring back Under the Dome, he would want them to do the novel. This, of course, means that he wants them to tell the story that has already been written by him instead of, well, not doing that.

Also important to remember is that Stephen King wants to start from the ground up, which means no reprises from the original. The concept of Under the Dome does lend itself to quite a meaty Netflix series. For those unaware of the premise, here is a refresher.

The action takes place in the Maine town of Chester’s Mill and one day, all of the town’s denizens are cut off from the outside world when an invisible barrier settles around them. Unable to be penetrated, the dome barricades the townspeople from the outside world. With no supplies able to get inside, and no one able to get out, tensions quickly rise.

You can see why Stephen King’s vision would be a sound story to build a television series around. Having watched CBS’ take on it, I would be curious to see what Netflix could do. They have a chance to make it a little edgier than CBS could.

So, I do not think this is a bad idea at all! Stephen King wanting Netflix to handle it is not entirely surprising. Two film adaptations of King’s work (Gerald’s Game and 1922) were both streamed on Netflix in 2017. Another one is on its way, with In the Tall Grass set to arrive on the streaming giant this year.

Those are all movies, though. The TV show Castle Rock, which uses characters and settings from many of King's stories, is on Hulu and will be back for a second season. Meanwhile, Amazon is adapting The Dark Tower into a television series and just added Michael Rooker to its cast.

However, Netflix has clearly won out when it comes to Stephen King’s support for managing an Under the Dome redo. And it might have something to do with how the streamer handled its zombie drama, Black Summer, because the horror-meister has praised that show.

There are tons of things to watch on Netflix currently and in the future. Summer television is going to keep bringing the premieres, so stick with CinemaBlend for all the latest.

Every month, shows get pirated on outlets like The Pirate Bay and Kickasstorrents. Interestingly enough, depending on the time of year, different shows will hit the most-pirated top 10 list. In August, a slew of shows were pirated on various outlets, but as it turns out, some of the most-pirated shows were some of this summer’s most popular programs—or at least some cult hits. You can check out the 10 most pirated shows downloaded on Pirate Bay in the month of August, below.

10. Under The Dome

We’re kicking off with a bit of a shocker, eh? Under the Dome was down in the ratings this season, and as a result, CBS ultimately opted to cancel the series. Apparently, everyone was just pirating the series instead of watching in live time. According to a report from SimilarWeb, Under the Dome received 1.72% of the Pirate Bay top 10 traffic share in August.

9. Pretty Little Liars

Pretty Little Liars had an eventful 2015, bringing a character back from the dead and revealing A, finally. With all of the crazy stuff going on, it’s no surprise the ABC Family show earned 2.32% of Pirate Bay’s top 10 traffic in August.

8. Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones had an epic fifth season, and I think it’s a testament to how popular the HBO drama is that people were still downloading episodes of the show several months after the Season 5 finale hit the schedule in June. Game of Thrones has regularly topped pirating lists, so its inclusion is fitting, here, with 3.06% of the traffic share. Although, HBO Now will give you a free month when you sign up, so (depending on location) you could always watch the show legally.

7. Ballers

Apparently, the Rock is more of a draw than dragons and British accents. Downloaders flocked to new HBO comedy Ballers, with 3.08% of top 10 downloaders getting their hands on the series. It’s sort-of like the new Entourage, but a little more nuanced, so we’re not all that surprised.

6. Hannibal

It’s too bad that all these people who were willing to download Hannibal couldn’t have tuned in to watch the cinematic-quality TV show on NBC. Hannibal was a draw for its look, its cast and its story, but it still got the axe from NBC earlier this summer. Apparently 4.66% of Pirate Bay’s top 10 traffic went directly to Hannibal downloads, so there is definitely interest in the series.

5. Fear The Walking Dead

AMC’s Walking Dead prequel has been the ratings hit of the summer, and even more people are watching the series through pirating forums. With a big jump from Hannibal, 9.53% of downloaders investing in the top 10 shows got their hands on Fear The Walking Dead. There are worse ways to spend time than watching a zombie epidemic break out in Los Angeles.

4. Suits

Suits is a veteran show on USA, and while less people are watching that show via traditional means, if these torrent results are any indication, Suits still has a widespread audience. The law-oriented drama nabbed a whopping 11.89% of the new top 10 traffic in the month of August, meaning quite a few people really, really wanted to get their hands on Suits.

3. True Detective

True Detective Season 2 wasn’t quite as critically acclaimed as Season 1, but that hasn’t stopped a slew of people from wanting to check out the drama, which starred Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams, Colin Farrell and Taylor Kitsch this time around. True Detective nabbed a 17.64% traffic share in the month of August.

2. Rick and Morty

Rick and Morty lovers should be pleased about this one. More than 20% of the people downloading the top 10 shows went straight to Rick and Morty. The second season of the show just premiered in July, so it makes sense that the show would pique in popularity in August. It didn’t earn the #1 slot though. That goes to…

1. Mr. Robot

Yeah, that’s right, USA’ wild but simultaneously grounded hacker drama is being watched by a lot of people on cable, but also via other forums. Mr. Robot premiered over the summer, and was picked up quickly by USA, so we will definitely be getting more episodes of the show in the future, as well. It was the most popular TV download in the month of August, pulling in 25.44% of all the traffic going to the top 10 most downloaded shows. If you have cable, you can also watch the drama on USA’s site.

Despite Under the Dome being a pretty huge summer success for CBS over the past few years, the network has decided that it’s been cooped up underneath that structure for long enough, and the execs are ending the show after this season, meaning we’ll probably never get to see Season 4. Unless it gets a revival series in 10 years, and the writers can talk about Chester’s Mill like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Because television is classy like that.

Thankfully, CBS had already put a bird in the ears of the writers and producers that Under the Dome might not get renewed beyond Season 3, which allowed everyone to figure out a way to end this story, making this season’s finale a proper ending for the series as a whole. Because yes, the dome is finally coming down, and it presumably won’t be a massive fakeout like we witnessed as Season 2 gave way to Season 3, and the cocoons became a thing.

Here’s how CBS Entertainment’s Nina Tassler announced it.

Considering the show was originally supposed to wrap up after the first season, when it still slightly resembled Stephen King’s source material, I guess we should be grateful it lasted this long. The story definitely took some weird and ridiculous left turns in the past three years, with wild motivational shifts from character like Big Jim Rennie, Dale Barbara and…every single other person in the show. Season 3 has built up Aktaion Energy and its employees (including CEO Eriq La Salle), while also seeing the uprising of Marg Helgenberger’s Kinship group/cult. I’m guessing the finale will tie all that up, even though it was revealed that certain aspects of the Season 3 finale could be expanded if the show got renewed. Hopefully any loose ends are extremely thin ones.

In the past, CBS made it seem like they were going to either renew Dome or the sophomore sci-fi drama Extant, so it looks like the Halle Berry-starring series’ chances just got a little better. As well, the freshman series Zoo probably has a better chance now than ever to get a Season 2 order. CBS still has some time to go before they’ll need to make those announcements, but expect them soon enough.

There are two episodes left in Under the Dome Season 3, and you can find them airing on CBS on Thursday nights. Here’s hoping Dean Norris locks up another TV show quickly.

Spoilers for those who aren’t caught up on Under the Dome Season 3.

When it comes to TV shows that are both ridiculous and ridiculously confusing, it’s hard to do much better (or worse, depending on your outlook) than CBS’ Under the Dome. After two-and-a-half years of “will they/won’t they” in terms of characters making it out from under the titular prison, it looks as if no one will be down there by the end of Season 3, as the show will apparently be bringing the entire shebang down. So what does that mean for the future? It’s rather unclear at this point, kind of like when the Dome was blacked out.

The news of the Dome’s downfall was confirmed at this year’s TCA press event by CBS entertainment chairman Nina Tassler, who said it’s “coming down at the end of this season.” Which could possibly mean it may going up and away, or it could explode, or it might just disappear into thin air; with this show, nothing ever seems to be so simple. And to be expected, the Dome’s parting with reality won’t be the end of everything.

According to EW, there are several “major events” that will take place after the Dome comes down, and that the creative team is setting up the Season 3 finale to serve as both a season-ender, as well as a series finale, should the network choose not to renew it for Season 4. But there will be at least one story path that won’t be cemented completely, and it could give the writers a new direction for next summer. Here’s how Tassler put it.

I bet most of these people will want nothing to do with each other for the rest of their lives if the Dome disappears. We saw how Barbie immediately skipped town whenever we all thought the Dome was gone at the beginning of Season 3, but that was just a trick involving cocoons. I can’t imagine they’d put audiences through two fakeouts in the same season.

It’s hard to say whether or not CBS will renew Under the Dome for Season 4. It was originally supposed to just be a limited series adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name, and has gone far beyond that source material in almost every way. And even if they’ve got story ideas for years, there’s no denying the viewing audience has taken a major tumble, with this year’s ratings steadily dropping and nowhere near the impressive Season 1 numbers.

All in all, we just want to know what’s up with the Kinship and Aktaion and…well, everything else. Are you guys ready to watch the Dome fall?

Now airing its third season on CBS, Under the Dome has seen plenty of characters die off of the science fiction-based series. However, while it’s not unexpected for characters to get killed off on TV, it is very unexpected to hear that a lead actor nearly ended up dying on the set. On Thursday, Under the Dome actor Mike Vogel, who plays the handsome Barbie on the summer drama, revealed that there was a practical effects problem that lead to a pretty harrowing experience on set this season.

During the filming of Season 3, the show was filming the cocoon scene that sort of helped Under the Dome to reset during the premiere. The team created real cocoons for the scene that Under the Dome cast member Colin Ford call the experience cold. Vogel says he was just hanging out in his cocoon to film the big scene when it starting having technical difficulties related to the dry ice that was pumping through the cool-looking TV prop. According to the actor:

It’s a story that Vogel, who plays the very popular Barbie on the summer CBS drama, tells fairly lightly, but safety is generally paramount on TV and movie sets. So for the loss of oxygen within a prop to occur is pretty serious. Luckily, Vogel ended up being totally fine and can joke about the near-death experience now, as can producer Tim Schlaffman, who kidded about how the team almost broke the cardinal rule of TV production—not killing the lead actors on set.

Actors can occasionally be injured on set—Johnny Depp suffered a notorious injury on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean 5 recently—but luckily, in Vogel’s case all is well that ends well.

In fact, it’s a really good thing that the cocoon episode was able to be filmed with no further major problems. We’re about to get into minor spoilers, so if you haven’t caught Under The Dome this season yet, head out now. When Season 3 picked up, the first episode proved to be a big fakeout, during which it seemed everything was back to normal following the events that occurred prior. However, Melanie was just keeping everyone inside giant cocoons under the city, which allowed the characters to live in non-reality. (Yes, it’s all very complex.) Eventually, the cocooned townspeople were found and let out, leading to one of the grossest and gooiest sequences in the show’s history.

The messy stuff related to the cocoons likely led to Vogel’s problems while filming. While it took a while to set up each cocoon during the filming, it all ended up looking like a pretty cool effect. So, I guess that’s probably worth a near-death moment. Totally.

You can catch Under The Dome Season 3 when it airs on Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET, only on CBS. You can also check out what else the network has coming up, here.

Though Britt Robertson is not a name that instantly strikes familiarity, it is one that is bound to. The young 25-year-old up-and-coming actress has been landing bigger name films left and right. Now, as she gears up for the release of her co-starring role aside George Clooney in Tomorrowland, the young actress is starting to feel what the spotlight truly entails. But, while her name is starting to become more common in the Hollywood ranks, it has surprisingly been a slow-coming process.

Robertson’s first big break came at age 14 when she scored the role of Michelle Seaver on TV movie Growing Pains: Return of the Seavers and from there, her resume started piling up with impressive films and TV shows, from Dan in Real Life and Delivery Man to her starring role The CW’s Life Unexpected. She continued her CW career with the supernatural teen drama, The Secret Circle, and is now currently in her third season of CBS’ Stephen King adaptation, Under the Dome. On top of her impressive TV presence, Robertson has starred in three big name movies in the past two years including Ask Me Anything, The Longest Ride and Tomorrowland. If her steady build to the top proves anything, it’s that this woman is definitely a hard worker and a name well worth remembering. So while we get ready to catch Tomorrowland, here are 12 things to help you get to know Britt Robertson a bit better.

She’s The Oldest of Seven Siblings

Britt Robertson is very close with her family who still reside in North Carolina (where she is from). Robertson has claimed numerous time that is her family that has always kept her grounded. When she moved to LA at age 14, her parents stayed home to raise her younger siblings, so it was her grandmother who lived with her for the first couple years there. When she got her big break playing Steve Carrell’s daughter in Dan in Real Life, she told People that she and her grandma would sit on set and knit together.

She’s Been Living On Her Own Since Age 16

After a couple years, Britt Robertson’s grandma returned to North Carolina, and the actress started to live on her in Los Angeles at the young age of 16. It may seem like a young age to be living on your own in such a big city, but Robertson was quite busy building up her resume with roles in films like From Within, TV shows such as The Winner and more. She also admitted to People, that while living on her own did get lonely, she made a bunch of great friends that she called her ‘faux family’ and they’d even cook her dinner and do her laundry for her if she needed the to.

Her Favorite Movie As A Kid Was Pretty Woman

As a young kid growing up in the South, Britt Robertson always wanted to get into acting, but her first movie she saw in the theaters was a bit unexpected. While Pretty Woman is a classic romantic-comedy, it’s not one you usually associate with childhood. But for Robertson, it was the relationship between Julia Roberts and Richard Gere that caught her eye. She explained her favorite movie choice to The Hollywood Reporter:

She Realized She Wanted To Be An Actress Through Soap Operas

It may have been Pretty Woman which was the first feature film that got Britt Robertson excited about acting, but the moment she decided she really wanted to become an actress, was while watching soap operas. She recalled the moment from her childhood with Yahoo:

She Followed Around Hilary Duff and Frankie Muniz

Britt Robertson started her acting career at a very young age and had the typical L.A. child actor experience. She lived in the Oakland Apartments, a notorious hub for child actors and their stage moms. And for the first few years that Robertson lived in the apartments, Hilary Duff and Frankie Muniz were often there. Robertson told Interview Magazine:

She Collects Aprons

Britt Robertson has been given the opportunity to travel the world with her quite extensive acting career (especially considering her age). So what is it that the Tomorrowland actress likes to collect on her trips? Well, turns out, Robertson really loves collecting Aprons. She collects them from all the different places that she visits. She explained this unique collection to Collider:

http://collider.com/britt-robertson-delivery-man-tomorrowland-interview/

Her Favorite Stephen King Adaptation Is The Shining

When working on the sci-fi drama series, Under The Dome, Britt Robertson got a taste as to what it’s like to be a part of Stephen King’s world. The series, based on the King novel of the same name has Robertson in a recurring role of Andie McAlister, a waitress and candy striper who dreams of leaving the small town of Chester’s Mill. But, when asked what Robertson’s personal favorite Stephen King adaptation was, she went with The Shining. She explained to Interview Magazine:

She Really Loves Reality TV

Britt Robertson may be scoring bigger and better roles, but her favorite thing to watch continues to be bad TV. She told Interview Magazine that reality shows are definitely her guilty pleasure, but would she ever be on one? She denied that possibility.

She Considers Herself A “Grandma”

Britt Robertson may be young, beautiful and living in the A-List ranks, but her fame has not made her a party girl whatsoever. She actually just enjoys hanging out and being a ‘grandma’. She told People that she’s been over that whole LA lifestyle for a while:

Her Secret Talent Is Rapping

Apparently, when Britt Robertson isn’t winning over audiences with her stellar acting performances, the young actress enjoys spitting some rhymes. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Robertson admitted that her secret talent is most likely rapping, and that she tends to obsess over learning some of her favorite raps. At the moment, her obsession was Nicki Minaj and Skylar Grey’s song “Bed of Lies” but she told Young Hollywood that she also loves Iggy Azalea, and would often rap songs on the set of The Longest Ride.

If She Wasn’t An Actress She’d Be Housekeeping

Out of all the professions in the world, Britt Robertson knows exactly what she would want to be doing if she weren’t an actress. And surprisingly, it’s cleaning houses. She told THR that she’s always wanted to start a housekeeping business because, well, she’s really good at cleaning houses. Considering Robertson moved to L.A. at the young age of 14, and has been acting ever since, we’re not sure whether or not this housekeeping business was a childhood dream, or something she still would love to participate in. Regardless, it doesn’t look like the actress will need to fall back on that career idea anytime soon.

CBS has started to put together a pretty compelling summer lineup. Today, the network announced that three of its original programs will be returning this summer, along with a brand new TV series based on a bestseller by James Patterson. The return shows include favorites Under The Dome and Big Brother, as well as Extant. The brand new series will be called Zoo. You can find out more about Zoo as well as check out premiere dates, below.

While CBS isn’t fond of May premieres, most of the network’s summer programming will hit homes in June. Big Brother will be the first to hit the schedule, airing a special two-night premiere. The first episode will hit the schedule on June 24 at 8 p.m. ET. Part 2 of the premiere will air a day later, hitting the schedule on June 25, also at 8 p.m. ET. It’s hard to believe that Big Brother is still going strong after 16 seasons, but the show actually does quite respectably in the ratings, and has been renewed for this summer’s Season 17, as well as Season 18.

In terms of the other premieres, Under the Dome will also hit the schedule on June 25, airing after Big Brother at 9 p.m. ET. Season 3 of Under the Dome is also getting special premiere treatment, and will air a 2-hour premiere from 9-11 p.m. that evening, which should be a treat for fans of the Stephen King series. CBS has also announced that Marg Helgenberger will appear on Under the Dome in a multi-episode arc. That shouldn’t be the only reason fans are tuning in, but it definitely doesn’t hurt.

While neither of those shows were surprise renewals, Extant was a bit of a shocker. The series boasts Halle Berry in its lead, but didn’t manage to crush in the ratings during its first season on the air. Regardless, it seems the show has retooled a bit heading into Season 2. In fact, the show has dumped most of its cast, and seems to be going in a whole new direction for the new episodes. Hopefully, this will also help to add a few more eyeballs to the drama, which will hit the schedule on July 1 at 10 p.m. ET. Adding Jeffrey Dean Morgan probably helps, too.

This brings us to Zoo, the new 13-episode series about a biologist (James Wolk) who has spent his life trying to warn humanity about the increasing number of mammals who are willingly attacking humans. The series is based on the book of the same name by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, and will hit the schedule on June 30 at 9 p.m. ET.

It’s hard to believe the networks are already gearing up for summer when there are still plenty of spring shows that have yet to premiere, but at least CBS can rest easy knowing its summer lineup should be pretty solid. Especially if Extant figures out how to be a more intriguing series.

Under the Dome has proven time and again that no character is genuinely safe in this series, as numerous characters have already been killed off. But is one of them going to come back? During the Under the Dome panel at Comic-Con in San Diego today, executive producer Neal Baer dropped a pretty strong hint about the potential return of one major character -- and he names some names!

Potential spoilers ahead! - And definite spoilers if you’re not caught up on Under the Dome through the first few episodes of Season 2!

Season 2 has seen a couple of major character exits in Under the Dome already, specifically beloved characters Angie and Linda. Alexander Koch took the vague approach in addressing the possibility of a character somehow returning, stating during the panel, “You never know when someone’s gonna go and you never know when they come around again.”

By that hint, we might have jumped to the conclusion that he’s referring to a possible dome-related drop-in or hallucination, much in the way we saw Alice return last season after she died, and Dodee drop in to haunt Jim in Season 2, and that may prove to be the case. But I got the sense that they might have been referring to something bigger here, as Neal Baer added “We said goodbye to Angie and Linda” and adding that “one of them might be back.”

Be back how? As a dome figment or an actual return from death? Baer didn't elaborate, but is this a hint that either Linda or Angie will somehow return as a character? It's really impossible to rule anything out on this show, so that may be what they were teasing. We'll have to wait and see.

Here are some other spoilery tidbits and fun comments revealed at the Comic-Con Under the Dome panel in Ballroom 20 today:

Someone might get out of the dome this season - “literally.”

We will find out what Angie saw in the locker before she died.

We will find out who killed Angie, and Alexander Koch says it’s been hinted at already. He also says revenge might be taken.

HoundsOfDiana.com is the website that follows the activity of the mysterious person in tweeting and trying to communicate with the people in the dome. Joe and Norrie’s video blogs will be on that site.

Dean Norris says Stephen King’s involvement is really important to the show. He kind of helps guide the show. “It couldn’t be better to have him around and contributing.” Norris adds that Stephen King scares the crap out of him.

Neal says the Under the Dome can keep going. “We have a lot of stories left to tell.”

Neal Baer and Mike Vogel reveal that we get to come face to face with Barbie’s father this year “in a new and open world.” And we find out that he in fact could have been a trust fund baby.” It sounds like Barbie had a privileged upbringing, which may have led to pushing him toward the military. “We find out some other familial secrets as well toward the end of this year that are going to surprise a lot of people.”

More misfortune and bad stuff is going to happen to Junior. “You’ll see more painful stuff headed Junor’s way," Alexander Koch said, In response to a question about whether there will be justice for what he did to Angie last season.

Rachelle Lefevre, who showed up on the panel dressed as Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica, was asked to do her Twilight line, “I’m the one with the wicked curveball.” She did it with a smile.

If Dean Norris had to go into an actual dome scenario, he’d take Britney Spears with him.

When asked if Joe might leave Norrie, Colin Ford says Norrie is Joe’s first love and “I don’t think you can ever really run away from your first love.”

We also saw a couple of really intense clips, one of which had Big Jim intimidating Rebecca Pine, and another revealed an extremely suspenseful scene that had Barbie over a ledge and in grave danger. There’s exciting stuff ahead as Season 2 continues to air this summer!

If you weren't already excited for the return of Under the Dome, the above video should do a nice job of whetting your appetite, especially if you're a Stephen King fan. The author of the book on which this CBS drama is based penned the first episode of the second season, and executive producer Neal Baer admits to hoping that this will be a sign to fans that Stephen King "sanctions the show."

Admittedly, it is comforting to know that King is actively involved in the second season of Under the Dome, especially considering how far the series has already detoured from the source material. For a series that's extending beyond a single season, that seems necessary in order to keep this story going. Writing the first episode of Season 2 would certainly give King the ability to have a big say in the direction of the series, and from what King reveals in the video above, it sounds like he wanted to have a hand in what's going on in Chester's Mill as Season 2 gets going. "I wanted to get a chance to put my Good Housekeeping seal of approval -- if you will -- on the show," King says. "And I also thought, if they will allow me to do the first episode, I can kind of guide the course of the season. On a personal level, man, I dug it. I wanted a chance to go back and visit with those characters. So, when everybody gave me a green light, I was just absolutely delighted and I sat down right away."

So, what's ahead for Under the Dome in Season 2? Not only does King tease a bigger season with "a few more teeth that people can chew into," but there will also be bigger challenges for the characters, terrific plot twists and some scary mind-blowing stuff. Bring it on! Also bring on the magnetic dome twist, because that looks like it'll make a big mess of everything.

In addition to the above featurette, CBS has also released this Under the Dome Season 2 extended preview ahead of tonight's premiere...

People are collapsing, metal things are flying, Dodee is back (presumably in ghost or Dome-inducing hallucination form) to creep out Big Jim. And then it's all about trying not to get impaled or crushed by something metal as the Dome's new magnetic properties threaten everyone. That's next-level scary, even by Dome standards!

Under the Dome premieres tonight (Monday, June 30) at 10:00 p.m. ET on CBS.

CBS has announced their Fall TV premiere schedule, calling it a "multi-phase rollout." The schedule begins with NFL Thursday Night Football on September 11, while the scripted series don't start rolling out until the week of Sunday, September 21. Among the returning shows lined up for premiere week are The Good Wife, Person of Interest and Hawaii Five-0, while newcomers Madam Secretary and NCIS: New Orleans also join the schedule that week. Meanwhile, most of CBS's half-hour comedies are being saved for late October.

CBS has the bulk of their new and returning programming rolling out over the last two weeks of September, with a few notable exceptions. They've also included season finales of summer dramas Under the Dome and Extant on there. Not listed is the season finale of Big Brother, which will presumably take place at some point during September. Closing out the schedule are 2 Broke Girls, The Millers, Two and a Half Men, Elementary and The McCarthys, all of which are set to premiere in late October, hence the mentioned "multi-phase rollout."

CBS notes in their release that the football programming on Thursday night is impacting their rollout. "The addition of THURSDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL provides the flexibility to strategically roll out our fall season in multiple waves, maximizing promotional platforms and scheduling opportunities to give our new and returning series the best possible launch,” said Nina Tassler, Chairman, CBS Entertainment."

So those looking forward to CBS' Thursday night comedy line-up will have to wait until almost November for that to happen. On the bright side, CBS isn't making the millions (and millions) of Big Bang Theory fans wait that long for their show to return, as the half-hour comedy made it onto the line-up in one of the early phrases of this strategic rollout. TBBT will air on Monday night, paired with fellow returner Mom, starting in September, but then move back to Thursday for its regularly scheduled time period starting in October when The Millers, Two and a Half Men, The McCarthys and Elementary air.

While the summer season is just getting going for television, CBS isn't the first network to lay out their fall plans with specific dates. View the NBC premiere schedule here. More information on the CBS 2014-2015 lineup, including information on new dramas Scorpion, NCIS: New Orleans, Stalker and The McCarthys can be found here.

The Summer TV season is upon us. With new shows like Extant, Rush, Outlander and Tyrant -- among others -- joining the lineup, and returning series like True Blood, Doctor Who, Under the Dome, Defiance and Graceland coming back, TV has plenty to offer us this summer. And to help you keep it all straight, we have the schedule of premiere dates for all of the new and returning primetime TV shows lined up this summer. It all starts this week with talent competitions So You Think You Can Dance and America's Got Talent among the returning series lined up to close out May...

Monday, May 26

8:00 p.m. American Ninja Warrior - NBC

9:00 p.m. Petals on the Wind - Lifetime

9:00 p.m. The World Wars - History

Tuesday, May 27

8:00 p.m. America's Got Talent - NBC

8:00 p.m. Extreme Weight Loss - ABC

10:00 p.m. The Night Shift - NBC

10:00 p.m. The Wil Wheaton Project - Syfy

Wednesday, May 28

8:00 p.m. So You Think You Can Dance - Fox

Thursday, May 29

9:00 p.m. Undateable - NBC

Friday, May 30

Derek - Netflix

10:00 p.m. Crossbones - NBC

Saturday, May 31

8:00 p.m. Bet on your Baby - ABC

9:00 p.m. Sing Your Face Off - ABC

Sunday, June 1

10:00 p.m. Halt and Catch Fire - AMC

Monday, June 2

10:00 p.m. Longmire - A&E

10:00 p.m. Mistresses - ABC

Wednesday, June 4

10:30 p.m. Jennifer Falls - TV Land

Friday, June 6

Orange is the New Black - Netflix

Saturday, June 7

9:00 p.m. Power - Starz

Tuesday, June 10

8:00 p.m. Pretty Little Liars - ABC Family

9:00 p.m. Chasing Life - ABC Family

9:00 p.m. Royal Pains - USA

Wednesday, June 11

9:00 p.m. Suits - USA

10:00 p.m. Graceland - USA

Monday, June 16

8:00 p.m. Switched at Birth - ABC Family

9:00 p.m. The Fosters - ABC Family

Thursday, June 19

8:00 p.m. Defiance - Syfy

9:00 p.m. Rectify - Sundance

9:00 p.m. Dominion - Syfy

9:00 p.m. Rookie Blue - ABC

Sunday, June 22

7:00 p.m. Wipeout - ABC

9:00 p.m. The Last Ship - TNT

9:00 p.m. Rising Star - ABC

9:00 p.m. True Blood - HBO

10:00 p.m. Falling Skies - TNT

Monday, June 23

10:00 p.m. Teen Wolf - MTV

Tuesday, June 24

10:00 p.m. Covert Affairs - USA

10:00 p.m. Tyrant - FX

Wednesday, June 25

8:00 p.m. Young and Hungry - ABC Family

8:00 p.m. Big Brother 16 - CBS

8:30 p.m. Mystery Girls - ABC Family

10:00 p.m. Taxi Brooklyn - NBC

10:00 p.m. Wilfred - FXX

Friday, June 27

9:45 p.m. Girl Meets World - Disney Channel

Sunday, June 29

9:00 p.m. Reckless - CBS

10:00 p.m. Unforgettable - CBS

10:00 p.m. The Leftovers - HBO

Monday, June 30

10:00 p.m. Under the Dome - CBS

Sunday, July 6

9:00 p.m. Witches of East End - Lifetime

Wednesday, July 9

9:00 p.m. Extant - CBS

10:00 p.m. The Bridge - FX

Thursday, July 10

9:00 p.m. Welcome to Sweden - NBC

Friday, July 11

Hemlock Grove - Netflix

Sunday, July 13

9:00 p.m. Ray Donovan - Showtime

10:00 p.m. Masters of Sex - Showtime

10:00 p.m. The Strain - FX

Thursday, July 17

9:00 p.m. Rush - USA

10:00 p.m. Satisfaction - USA

10:00 p.m. Married - FX

10:30 p.m. You're the Worst - FX

Sunday, July 20

10:00 p.m. The Lottery - Lifetime

Monday, July 21

9:00 p.m. Hotel Hell - Fox

Tuesday, July 22

8:00 p.m. Food Fighters - NBC

Sunday, July 27

10:00 p.m. Manhattan - WGN America

Thursday, July 31

8:00 p.m. The Quest - ABC

Monday, August 4

8:00 p.m. Bachelor in Paradise - ABC

Saturday, August 9

9:00 p.m. Outlander - Starz

Wednesday, August 13

9:00 p.m. Legends - TNT

Saturday, August 23

8:00 p.m. Doctor Who - BBC America

Summer TBD

Hell on Wheels - AMC

Film fans are on the cusp of an upcoming onslaught of cinematic adaptations for some of Stephen King’s greatest works, and book fans are eagerly awaiting his next novel Mr. Mercedes. And though Season 2 of CBS’ Under the Dome doesn’t really have anything to do with King’s source material anymore, TV audiences can still expect for the prolific author's influence to be felt. Especially since he’ll have his very own cameo in the first episode.

That bit of news and more – including the first look seen above – were announced today at CBS’ first Summer Junket Day, where CBS Productions Television Studios David Stapf apparently said, “Summer is the new fall,” according to Deadline. (No, no, it isn’t.) It was previously announced that King was writing that first episode, and now we know a little bit more about where this season of “transformation” will be going. And shit is gonna get pretty weird in Chester’s Mill; even weirder than an invisible dome covering a city.

Season 2 will cover another two weeks in the lives of its characters, the same as the first, and will focus on the Dome turning magnetic, which has a predictably dramatic effect on all the town’s metallic objects, including cars, knives, crowbars and assumedly metal plates in people’s bodies. This is where at least one of the teased character fatalities will come in. If it all sounds a little ridiculous, let’s remember that King is (no pun intended) the king of turning inanimate objects into pillars of horror. But let’s also remember that Season 1 of this series was pretty awful. Especially the early kidnapping plot involving these guys.

“This is about ecological disaster pending – that magnetism has caused many things to happen,” said Baer, who also pointed to “biblical problems of pestilence and bloody rain” showing up. This will probably be connected to the impending battle between the faith-infused Julia (Rachelle LeFevre) and new character Rebecca (Karla Chrome), a teacher whose Dome approach is based solely in science, while the duplicitous Big Jim Rennie (Dean Norris) is caught in the middle.

Speaking of new cast, EW is reporting Person of Interest star Brett Cullen will be joining the series as Barbie’s (Mike Vogel) dad, Don Barbara. In case you’re wondering, like I still am, about how we can have new characters in such a closed-off setting, Baer also teased that someone (or perhaps more than just one person) may be going in and/or out of the dome this season.

For a non-plot-heavy fun fact, Baer created the long-running drama ER, and that show’s Sherry Stringfield will star this season as Big Jim’s wife Pauline, while former co-star Eriq La Salle is directing Episode 10. Somebody get George Clooney and Anthony Edwards involved, stat!

There’s no word on whom the cameo-friendly King will appear as, sadly. Will he be a minister like he was in Pet Sematary? Or maybe a pharmacist like he was in Thinner? Can we hope for something more Creepshow than that?

Under the Dome is set to pull you to its magnetic pole on Monday, June 30. Don’t get caught outside.

What better way to kick off the start of production for the second season of Under the Dome than with a video of Stephen King calmly "Tweeting" from an old typewriter on the set. Because that's how Stephen King would Tweet, right? The teaser from the set also features Under the Dome stars Mike Vogel and Colin Ford throwing Dean Norris's character under the bus as they plead for him to be the one to not be safe this season. Alas, King says the script has been written!

Under the Dome follows the residents of a small New England town that's struggling to survive amidst mysterious circumstances, among which is the impenetrable dome that's surrounded their town, cutting them off from the outside world. We've known since last summer that author Stephen King, who penned the book on which this series is based, would be writing the second season premiere episode. And given how far the CBS series has strayed from the source material, there's really no telling which characters are at risk this season, so -- as amusing as their efforts were in the above video -- it's not entirely unreasonable for Vogel and Ford to feel some concern for Barbie and Joe. In King's own words, "No one's safe." We might need to prepare ourselves for him to prove those words in the premiere, which will air on CBS on Monday, June 30.

Via an article shared on Stephen King's Facebook page, production for Season 2 of Under the Dome has resumed in Wilmington, North Carolina and the surrounding area. Meanwhile, Mike Vogel shared this photo from the set on his Twitter, which includes King:

And Stephen King Tweeted the following yesterday:

We might assume he did this from his typewriter, which is most likely acquired from some dark parallel universe where typewriters have access to wifi. Because he's Stephen King and if anyone would have access to such a device, he would. But if you look closely at Vogel's picture that red thing in King's hand might actually be an iPad, which creates a more practical theory about King's Tweeting habits. I prefer the former theory, personally.

We're stoked for the return of Under the Dome as well! In addition to returners like Vogel, Ford, Dean Norris and others, we know that the second season will also included ER's Sherry Stringfield, who's rumored to play a very interesting role related to a couple of key characters. Also joining the show is Victoria Grace Cox, whose arc is connected to Ford's character Joe.

ER alum Sherry Stringfield has been cast in CBS's drama Under the Dome in what could prove to be a pretty crucial role in the story. As was the case with the recent casting of Grace Victoria Cox in Season 2, this role isn't directly connected to a character from Stephen King's book. But given how far the series has already drifted from its source material, that's to be expected at this point.

TV Guide posted the news that Stringfield will recur in multiple episodes of the CBS drama, playing Pauline, "a mysterious woman who may be connected to the origins of the dome." The site goes on to note that the show is keeping details surrounding this character under wraps right now, however they did offer a casual nudge toward an article they ran earlier this month, which teased the arrival of a character whose name just so happens to be Pauline. Here's where things get a bit more spoilery so...

Big SPOILERS AHEAD!

TV Guide's previously posted spoiler-article says Pauline is the presumed-to-be-dead Pauline Rennie, otherwise known as Big Jim Rennie's wife and Junior's mother. Remember those paintings Junior had that seemed to predict Junior with the pink stars? Yeah, that Pauline. So, unless there are two Paulines being introduced in Season 2, it's probably safe to assume Stringfield is playing Junior's mother. And maybe she'll have more answers... including why she faked her own death.

END SPOILERS

Stringfield has a number of notable TV credits to her name, the biggest of which is surely that of Dr. Susan Lewis on ER. She appeared in the series for the bulk -- but not all -- of its run. Before that, she appeared in Guiding Light and NYPD Blue. Since then, she's played a series of roles in various TV movies, and last year, she appeared in an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. She joins recently cast Grace Victoria Cox, who signed on earlier this month to play the role of Melanie, a girl who befriends Colin Ford's character Joe in Season 2.

Under the Dome is set in the small town of Chester's Mill, where the residents are now struggling to survive under apocalyptic circumstances after a mysterious dome dropped down over the town, cutting them off from the outside world. As mentioned, the course of the series has already taken a few sharp turns away from Stephen King's book, so there's really no predicting what will happen in the drama's second season. Though the series isn't sticking very closely to the book in terms of the story and character development, it hasn't abandoned King entirely, nor has King abandoned it. The excellent author is set to write the first episode of the second season. And that second season is coming in just a few months. CBS has Season 2 scheduled to premiere Monday, June 30.

At this point, it's probably fair to say that if you're a Stephen King fan who read Under the Dome, you're about as in-the-dark about what's coming up on the CBS series as any other viewer anticipating the show's second season. The small screen adaptation has already deviated so much from the source material in terms of character development and story that even the dome seems to be playing by its own TV-land rules. So this latest bit of casting comes without any nods to the source material, as I don't recall there being any Melanie in King's book.

THR says newcomer Grace Victoria Cox has signed on to play the recurring role of 18-year-old Melanie, who's described as "lithe, mysterious, beautiful and almost regal." Apparently, she'll be burying up with Colin Ford's character Joe. "Poised and ethereal, Melanie is from the right side of the tracks and is a clear contrast to Norrie." Interesting.

Unless I'm completely forgetting a character named Melanie, or a mysterious right-side-of-the-tracks teen who befriends Joe, she's not a book character, and it's probably fair to say we should eye her warily, as would be the case for just about anyone who's introduced to the story in the second season. Not everyone in Chesters Mill has proven to be all that trustworthy.

In terms of introducing new characters to an environment that's isolating a specific location, Under the Dome will probably need to tread very carefully. On one hand, with the whole dome-covered town at their disposal, it's reasonable to think that we haven't "met" every single person that's in Chesters Mill. But on the other hand, if you've seen Lost then you're already familiar with Nikki-and-Paolo syndrome: a strong negative reaction to randomly new characters -- especially really pretty ones -- whom the writers have conjured up and inserted into an established ensemble partway through the series in the hopes that viewers will accept them into the fold as though they were there the whole time. Viewers did not accept Nikki and Paolo, and those two were eventually written off... with a pretty disturbing sendoff, I might add.

I'm not saying young Melanie or any other new character to the series is automatically a Nikki or a Paolo, but given the nature of the series, which has a setting not unlike an island when you factor in the dome that's keeping everyone stuck there and cut off from the world, and the supernatural/sci-fi-ish nature of the things that are happening in the story, not to mention Lost's Brian K. Vaughan's involvement in developing the series, it wouldn't be all that hard to draw some loose parallels.

The above said, it's only Season 2, and since a couple of characters didn't make it out of the first season, there are certainly some vacancies for newcomers and new drama. And I can't complain much about the way the series has shifted away from the source material, partially because I'm more a fan of the characters and the concept of King's book than I was in the direction the story took toward the end. And partially because I think it's more fun to watch a TV show when you don't already know everything that's going to happen. So it'll be exciting to get to know Melanie and see how she fits into this complicated story.

CBS has already set the date for Under the Dome's return as Monday, June 30 at 10:00 p.m. Stephen King is writing the first episode of Season 2.

Are you ready to return to the Dome? Well, we still have a while to wait for Under the Dome to return to CBS for its second season, but the network did announce the official premiere date for the series, along with the debut date for their new drama Extant, starry Halle Berry. Also announced today were the return dates for The Amazing Race: All Stars and Survivor.

The reality shows will be back much sooner than the mentioned dramas. Check out the newly announced dates below:

The Amazing Race - premieres Sunday, February 23 at 8:00 p.m.

Survivor - premieres with a 2-hour episode on Wednesday, February 26 at 8:00 p.m.

Under the Dome - premieres Monday, June 30 at 10:00 p.m.

Extant - premieres Wednesday, July 2 at 9:00 p.m.

Included in the news that Under the Dome is set to return at the end of June — that’s right around the date-frame the series premiered last summer — is the reminder that Under the Dome author Stephen King is set to pen the first episode of Season 2. That news was announced last year when CBS gave word that they were renewing the series. Still, it’s good to be reminded of that, especially considering just how far the drama has ventured from the source material. As a fan of King’s, it’s not only great to know he’s still actively involved in the drama, but having a hand in the direction of the new season.

Moving on to another summer drama at CBS, the network has also set the date for Extant, a mystery thriller starring Halle Berry, which centers on a female astronaut trying to reconnect with her family when she returns after year in outer space. There’s obviously a much bigger scenario to this story, however, as the woman’s experience eventually lead to events that will change the course of human history. I still feel like that description is maddeningly vague, but it seems like the kind of premise that’s easier teased with video than it is with a synopsis. So hopefully CBS will make with the trailer already! We’ll be sure to share it once they do. In the meantime, countdown to July 2 for this drama’s arrival. That’s a Wednesday, which indicates that CBS isn’t looking to pair their new drama with Under the Dome, which airs on Monday nights. Also, as per the previous announcement, expect to see each episode pop up on Amazon Prime a few days after it airs.

Speaking of CBS, between the reality shows arriving this winter and premiere dates for the summer dramas, we’ll hopefully hear word soon enough on when the network is looking to premiere the new season of Big Brother. The long-running reality series has already been renewed for a sixteenth season and typically premieres during the start of the summer season. It was this time last year that CBS announced the premiere date for the series, so that update may be coming along soon. We’ll be sure to let you know.

White House Down Blu-ray Combo Pack

Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx should have opened up one of this summer’s biggest movies. Both actors are big names in the business, and they had The Amazing Spider-Man’s James Vanderbilt and big budget guru Roland Emmerich to put together the film, as well. While the movie didn’t manage to dominate the box office, it’s still a fun but frilly movie that's short on surprises but long on fun.

The set-up is fairly simple, which helps to usher audiences into the dramatic White House takeover as quickly as possible. Cale (Channing Tatum) pulls some strings to get an interview at the famed DC home, hoping to earn a position within the current President’s (Jamie Foxx) Secret Service detail. He brings along his daughter, Emily (Joey King), a White House freak who has never been inside the prestigious building before. Once they are in, all chaos breaks loose thanks to terrorists, mercenaries and corrupt politicians. Jason Clarke, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jimmi Simpson, James Woods, and Richard Jenkins also have prime roles in the flick.

White House Down shouldn’t be treated as if it is a realistic terrorist movie. It’s basic premise is as wild and unlikely as the Die Hard franchise or even Independence Day, but unlike those movies, it doesn’t really recognize its ludicrousness. Its biggest problem is that it occasionally tries to take itself a little too seriously, with a bunch of political rhetoric tripe thrown in among the fun action sequences. Luckily, there is also a scene where President Sawyer and Cale do donuts on the White House Lawn with a rocket launcher, so there is enough humor in the film to keep the movie from ever becoming too boring.

We'll probably never know exactly why White House Down didn't breakout as a huge hit. Maybe it was bad timing because of the stocked summer schedule. Maybe it was the similarities with Olympus Has Fallen. Either way, I really wish audiences would have given the film a chance. It's a fun, circular movie with likeable characters. It may not inspire the imagination to work overtime, but it isn't a waste of time either.

You can order White House Down over at Amazon.

Best Special Feature: It seems as if there are quite a few bonus features with the set, but once you start watching them, you’ll probably realize that most of them could have been mashed together into one longer making of segment. Still, I give Sony Pictures Home Entertainment some credit for giving each of the segments clever names and making most of them a reasonable length. I’ve seen a lot of bonus features with other films explaining the special effects and the action, and the ones on this disc weren’t that exciting. However, I did love the bonus feature "The Beast," which explains how workers on the show were able to custom build a vehicle they used in the film during the epic car chase scene that looks similar to the real limousine used by the president.

Other Special Features:

Gag Reel

"A Dynamic Duo"

"The Beast"

"Men of Action"

"The Full Arsenal"

"VFX Boundaries Down"

"The Inside Story"

"Presidential Treatment"

"Lights, Camera, Heart-Pumping Action"

"Roland Emmerich – Upping the Ante"

"Crashing the Oval Office"

"Drowning the Beast"

"Recreating the White House"

"Meet the Insiders"

Twilight Forever Blu-ray

The Twilight Saga has been a box office Cinderella story, beginning with Catherine Hardwicke’s 2008 film, Twilight, which was made on a paltry $37 million budget and ended up grossing nearly $400 million worldwide. The subsequent films accrued even more financial success, enjoying a following many other teen franchises never manage to attain. Last winter, the saga was completed, and this week Summit Entertainment and Lionsgate have released the definitive collective for the series. It’s called Twilight Forever: The Complete Saga, and it comes with over two hours of brand new bonus features.

The saga follows the adventures and misadventures of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), a young woman looking for friends in a brand new town. Eventually, she finds more than she bargained for in a complicated love triangle with vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and shape-shifter Jacob Black (Tayler Lautner). Eventually, Swan makes a choice, but just as she does, an underhanded war begins to rage in the supernatural community she holds most dear.

The Twilight Forever set highlights the key players in the films and the convoluted love triangle at the heart of the series. You can see the cover art, above, but what it doesn’t reveal is the heavy, full-color book that houses each of the five movies in the series, as well as the bonus discs. The packaging is sturdy and is one of the nicest we’ve seen this year.

The Twilight Forever set offers a special bonus disc that is filled with new features. We’ve already brought you some snippets from these extras, including the creepy "Chuckesmee" doll. As a whole, the extras provide the most in-depth information about the making of the five films available in one location, and while some of the information may not be new to the most avid of Twilight fans, the social media mentions and the constant nods to the fans should give purchasers the feeling they are part of a club.

The disc starts with "Twilight Fanomenon," an extra that discusses how people were on hand when the first movie began filming, but that they began showing up in droves by the time the film reached Comic-Con. Additionally, nods to many of the fansites related to the series and their owners are also spotlighted. A lengthy "Cast Retrospective" featuring even many of the smaller players in the cast helps to give this sort of feeling that those involved with the films became a sort of family. I watched this stuff for hours, and a lot of it explains little anecdotal stories and feelings each of the cast members had while they were shooting specific scenes. There is tons of information there, from the pains of shooting the final battle on green screen to most of the cast’s love of Jacob throwing a hotdog at Rosalie’s head. Jacob and Edward both get their own extras, which flash forward through each of their moments spent with Bella. If you don’t feel like watching all of the movies, this is a great way to catch up on some key moments in the evolution of the characters and the main love triangle involved with the film.

There are clearly both defenders and haters of the franchise, and the Twilight Forever set is for the avid fans only. It’s rare that I would suggest avid fans repurchase a series if they already own one or more copies, but the Twilight Forever set is beautifully executed and worthy of any fan’s collection.

You can order Twilight Forever: the Complete Saga over at Amazon.

Other Special Features:

All of the Twilight Blu-ray Extras

All of The Twilight Saga: New Moon Blu-ray Extras

All of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Blu-ray Extras

All of The Twilight Saga: Beaking Dawn, Part 1 Blu-ray Extras

All of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 Blu-ray Extras

Lovelace Blu-ray Combo Pack

For a brief period in the 1970s, porn star Linda Lovelace was a household name, one that divisively claimed her as a star of the sexual revolution while simultaneously asserting her as reprehensible in a society that was trying desperately to hold on to family values and a religious code. The porn star turned housewife would later spend much of her career denouncing her years in porn, but that’s not really the story audiences will encounter in Lovelace. In fact, much of the plot in the movie is taken directly from Lovelace’s popular book, Ordeal.

Lovelace is most famous for the 1972 film Deep Throat, but her story in Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Lovelace begins much earlier, focusing on a youngish Linda Boreman (Amanda Seyfried) and her early moral code. All of this changes when she meets Chuck Traynor (Peter Scaarsgard), an older dude who reveals himself to be interested in making home pornographic films. Lovelace seems to enjoy the wild sexual romp for a while, but then her reality takes a dark turn.

Traynor and Lovelace’s relationship becomes a volatile one, full of threats, beatings, and even forced prostitution. It’s harrowing to watch Lovelace get through the ordeal that seems to be her pornographic career, and while the story makes for somewhat compelling film, the truth of the biographical narrative is somewhat more wishy-washy. Andy Bellin’s script seems to take Lovelace’s word at face value, although her version of events has also provoked devisive criticism and support in the past.

Still the film is visually appealing and put together by masterful eyes. The color and flair of the seventies is constantly present, and the film frequently uses home movie reels to show action in the narrative—fitting, due to the context of the film. Additionally, a slew of big names are on hand to play small roles through the film. These actors include James Franco as the too-young playboy savant Hugh Hefner. Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, Bobby Cannavale, Juno Temple, and Chris Noth all have moderately meaty roles. Other big names, like Adam Brody and Chloe Sevigny, appear, as well. It’s Seyfried who is really great onscreen, though. At one point she talks about her character in Deep Throat being like a budding flower that is on the cusp of flourishing. What her character doesn’t discuss is what happens to the flower as it slowly stops opening up and begins the slow and painful process of dying on the inside. Eventually, Seyfried shows us this process through her character, and although it’s anticlimactic, the film is still worth a perusal based on this performance, and the care taken with the production of the film as a whole.

You can order Lovelace over at Amazon.

Best Special Feature: As we noted in our initial news story, the only extra with the disc is an extensive making of featurette called "Behind Lovelace." There’s a lot of background information about the film in the extra, but I actually enjoyed just hearing Seyfried discuss how she saw the character and the journey of the character through the film. It’s not the best making of segment I’ve ever encountered, but if you liked the film, you will probably find the extra to be informative.

Boy Meets World: The Complete Collection DVD

Boy Meets World ran as part of ABC’s TGIF lineup between 1993 and 2000, making its way into millions of homes and featuring protagonists that grew up as many members of its audience were simultaneously growing and changing as young adults. Over the course of its seven seasons and its subsequent syndication, the show has become somewhat of a cultural phenomenon, and now it is available in a complete series set.

In some ways, the Boy Meets World: The Complete Collection set is a little disappointing. It is still in DVD form, albeit repackaged, and it still uses the same photos that are available with some of the single season sets. It isn’t sturdy nor does it come with an extensive list of new bonus features. In other ways, though, the set works really well. The timing of Lionsgate Home Entertainment’s set is perfect, with the show’s spinoff series, Girl Meets World, hitting the Disney Channel’s schedule in just a few months. Additionally, there may not be a ton of new extras, but there are a few new featurettes for fans that touch on important moments and reminiscing from the show’s characters.

While the seasons of Boy Meets World have been available on DVD before, this is actually a set offering the series in its entirety, and it should prove to be the definitive collection for fans. While the set does run rather expensively, it is available at a cheaper price over at Amazon, which may help out the fans of the show who are on a budget. Check out the special features, below, and decide for yourself.

Best Special Feature: "Boy Meets World: Back to the Beginning" is a spotlight on the series featuring interviews from most of the main cast members. It’s fairly lengthy, but it should keep your attention, as it explains how most of the actors and actresses were cast, as well as is filled with stories about how certain episodes and actions from the characters came about. Additionally, the famous Halloween episode is touched on and some other fan favorite moments are discussed.

Other Special Features:

"Boy Meets…World Fandom"

"The World According To Boy"

Audio Commentary

Bonus Episode From Season 4

"Picture-in-Picture Video Commentary with Cast and Crew

Under the Dome Blu-ray

CBS’ summer series Under the Dome did so well over the summer that the limited event series was actually given an unprecedented second season. The show will return to the schedule for Season 2 in 2014, but in the meantime you can check out the Under the Dome Blu-ray, which features all thirteen episodes of the first season of the series, as well as a solid list of behind-the-scenes extras.

The show begins and ends with plenty of action. On a seemingly normal day in the town of Chester’s Mill, a group of residents find themselves trapped under a mysterious dome, a solid entity that causes houses and animals to split in half and is responsible for numerous car and airplane accidents. In the aftermath of the appearance of the dome, the town is in chaos and while some people are trying to keep the peace, others are trying to take control. There’s the dastardly Big Jim Rennie (Dean Norris) and his creepy son, Junior (Alexander Koch). There are the newcomers, Barbie (Mike Vogel) and Norrie (Mackenzie Lintz). There’s Sheriff Linda (Natalie Martinez), who must shoulder the brunt of the governing responsibility once the dome goes up. The cast is a true ensemble one, and its multitude of varied and complex characters that are tied together throughout the tenure of Season 1 is one of the reasons Under the Dome works so well.

Under the Dome is another set out this week that did not spare any expense with its packaging. CBS Home Entertainment’s Blu-ray set comes with an outer shell with two pieces that help to outline the nearly invisible dome against the night sky. The inner packaging is adorned with a bloody handprint and features four discs of content. If I have any complaint, it’s that the special features are spread across each of the discs, but as this is somewhat typical with seasons of TV, it’s a pretty small complaint.

You can order Under the Dome over at the CBS Store.

Best Special Feature: The special features are spread across each of the discs, although the majority can be found on Disc 4. It actually took me quite some time to figure out how to access the deleted scenes found on Disc 2 and 3. (You have to find the episodes that offer deleted scenes and access them by clicking on the episode and then the deleted scenes button, rather than using the special features button, which is how the other extras are accessed.) In truth, the deleted scenes were nothing much to write home about, but some of the behind-the-scenes segments were full of information.

CBS has been good about releasing videos from the cast and crew explaining many aspects about the show. I already gleaned a lot of the facts from the promotional interviews and behind-the-scenes segments the show put out on social media during the initial run, but if you haven’t caught any of those, the extras should be worth a watch. I always like hearing what Stephen King’s perspective is on the show, since he is heavily involved and wrote the book of the same name that provided the source material for Under the Dome. As far as the extras go, be sure to check out "Stephen King and Under the Dome."

Other Special Features:

"Under the Dome: From Novel to Series"

"The World of Under the Dome"

"Under the Dome: The First Season"

Joe’s Blog

Gag Reel

Deleted Scenes

"Under the Dome: Filming the Pilot"

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Extended Edition Blu-ray Combo Pack

Not so long ago, Peter Jackson fans were forced to wait until 2012 for the single extended edition Blu-rays for each of the films in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Technology has come a long way in the last decade and the transferral for Jackson’s first film in The Hobbit trilogy has been far less of an ordeal. Less than a year after the theatrical Blu-ray and DVD release of the film, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has released The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Extended Edition onto Blu-ray and DVD.

The set comes with brand new cover art, but more importantly, it comes with 13 minutes of extra film footage and a whopping nine hours of bonus features. With the film’s sequel, Desolation of Smaug not yet out, it will still be a while before fans see a full-trilogy box set, but in the meantime, the Extended Edition doesn’t look too shabby. You can check out the list of new bonus features, here. Or, you can order The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Extended Edition over at Amazon.

This week also sports several other fan favorite TV releases, including Mad Men’s sixth season and a Doctor Who gift set. In fact, a lot of this week’s releases would make for excellent holiday gifts, should you be able to match them with the right person. You can check out some of the rest of this week’s releases, below. Unless otherwise noted, sets are available on both Blu-ray and DVD.

Other October 29 Releases

Grown Ups 2

Clear History

Mad Men: Season 6

Parkland

Doctor Who: Series 1-7 Limited Edition Blu-ray Gift Set

Magic City: The Complete Second Season

Weeds: The Complete Collection

Girl Most Likely

Duck Dynasty: I Am Dreaming of a Redneck Christmas

The Right Stuff: 30th Anniversary Edition

Saved by the Bell: The Complete Collection

Scoot & Kassie’s Christmas Adventure DVD

Abducted DVD

Well, the first season of Under the Dome didn't end quite like I hoped it would, but I'll admit, I was on the edge of my seat for those last few minutes, and actually issuing orders at my TV to Julia to move faster, because her dramatic pause was killing me. Let's insert the spoiler alert here. If you haven't seen the season finale of Under the Dome read no further!

The short and sweet recap of tonight's episode is that the cocoon hatched, the butterfly emerged and splotched black inky stuff all over the inside of mini dome, resulting in big-dome also being encased in darkness…

The butterfly hatched. Mini-dome opened up. Julia's the monarch. And someone or something that looked like Alice appeared to Julia and the kids and revealed that they need to protect the black egg that was inside the dome in order to earn the light back. She also told them that they put the dome over Chester's Mill to protect them, but she wouldn't say from what. The episode ended with Junior and Big Jim about to publicly hang Barbie while some of the townspeople watched. Then Julia dropped the egg and Barbie's dog tags into the lake, resulting in a slow explosion of pink stars filling up the sky. The darkness turned to light, only it didn't look like the dome went clear again. It looked like opaque white surrounding the dome, so does that mean they're now stuck in daylight?

We're also left hanging on Barbie's fate. Big Jim was trying to use the dome's latest event as proof that somehow they're being favored for their decision to kill Barbie. And in the final moments of the episode, he was yelling for Junior to pull the lever which would presumably drop the floor out from under Barbie, but Junior was hesitating. Will he do it? We'll find out next season. Junior seems so vulnerable to manipulation. He was on the verge of shooting his father earlier, it seemed, believing the dome wanted him to do it and thinking maybe he deserved it if he really did kill people. And then Rennie, having seen the paintings his wife did and realizing the connection between his wife's history and what's going on now, explained all that to Junior in a grand speech about their fate that turned his son around. Instead of shooting him, Junior hugged him and followed dear old Dad out to the town square for Barbie's hanging.

Does Big Jim really believe in what's happening, or is he just using it all as an excuse to make things happen the way he wants them to. Maybe both? One of the things that drove me crazy about Rennie in the book -- kind of in a good way -- is the way he seemed to justify his choices. It was like he believed what he was doing was for the greater good, no matter how dark or violent his actions were. I don't know that I've gotten that impression from TV Rennie, as he seems to be making things up as he goes along and shrugging off any remorse he might feel. But maybe that's changing.

Looking forward toward Season 2, I really hope they work on Linda as a character. I understood why she needed to be a step behind during some of the events earlier in the season, but at this point, she seems like the only one that doesn't know what's going on and it makes her look foolish. Phil's also in that boat, but he's only concerned about Barbie paying for Dodee's death, so there's just one thing that he's wrong about. And hopefully Phil finds out the truth and passes along that kick to the face to Big Jim, who really deserves it. In the meantime, it's borderline comical watching Linda try to take charge of things whenever she's in a room. Her attempts to claim the mini-dome as police property just seemed goofy, as though she could call dibs on something like that in the first place. Then she insists on touching it and gets herself zapped unconscious. These are the kinds of things I want to see happen to characters I don't like. Watching them happen to Linda just makes me cringe. I feel like she either needs to be written away from the main story a bit or brought into the fold and fed a bit more information. But as she stands now, she keeps trying to take charge in situation when she knows the least about what's going on, which makes it hard to take her seriously, or even to like her really.

I wanted the dome to come up tonight. I liked the idea of a sort of refresh happening between seasons, where Chester's Mill could replenish its resources and new characters could be brought in before the dome inevitably dropped down again. That didn't happen. But I'm not entirely disappointed, as I like the revelation that the dome is actually protecting Chester's Mill from something. What is it? Is something going on in the outside world that they're being shielded from? That's a pretty big question for us to ponder while we wait until the series returns for Season 2.

Big Jim Rennie is the ultimate schemer. But it seems like the clock is ticking on his antics, and sooner or later, his misdeeds are going to catch up with him. But is that before or after the monarch is crowned? Or before whatever passes for "justice" is served on Barbie for everything he's been blamed for? These are the questions we're left to ask as we wait for the first season finale of Under the Dome.

The penultimate episode, titled "Exigent Circumstances" saw the demise of one of Chester's Mill's sweetest residents, due to Jim Rennie's determination to cover his tracks at all costs. Though he was able to blame most of his kills on Barbie, it was Reverend Coggins' murder that came back to haunt Rennie. No one in Chester's Mill saw him push the reverend's ear to the dome, but based on what Rennie overheard the military people discussing on the radio, someone on the outside spotted the murderous act and identified Rennie as a killer.

Poor Dodee was standing in the doorway at the radio station when Rennie heard the chatter on the radio, and it didn't take her long to figure out that if Rennie murdered Coggins, he must have killed all those other people and blamed Barbie. She might've been better off not mentioning that part. But I'm not sure there's much she could have said to talk her way out of that information, aside from maybe not giving up the exact location of the mini-dome. That might've been something to leverage her way out of the room. Instead, she told him it was in the barn. He pulled a gun on her and gave her just enough time to tell him that the whole town would someday learn that he was a phony and a killer. And I was sitting there wishing she'd somehow hit the on-air switch and broadcast the whole thing to the town, but that doesn't appear to be the case, unfortunately. Rennie shot her in the heart, then burned the radio station down. RIP Dodee. Your last words were great. Sad to see you go.

The radio station fire was a bit reminiscent of the book, as was Barbie being tried in front of the whole town. Jim deserves some credit, the man certainly can scheme. It seemed like he had everything set up perfectly, including forcing Barbie to confess to all the murders, or else see the mini-dome club and Julia framed. And it seemed like Barbie was going to go along with this. But in the final moments of the episode, when the mini dome was acting strange and it looked like the caterpillar was on the verge of hatching, and Junior was pressing his hands against the big dome and possibly getting some new instructions, Barbie declared himself not-guilty in front of the whole town.

So we're left to wonder how Big Jim will proceed. Rennie certainly has a lot on his plate right now. He's killed a bunch of people and he needs Barbie framed for that. He's worried Julia Shumway will wake up because he knows she'll tell people it wasn't Barbie who shot her and then Rennie's whole story will crumble, and he doesn't want the dome to come up, especially considering the army knows he murdered people. If and when the dome comes up, he's done for. Of course, Julie did wake up after Angie and Barbie snuck her out of the clinic, and then Angie snuck her back in. Good thinking, Angie! Beats stashing her at Ben's place under a pile of blankets, anyway...

Going back to Big Jim Rennie, I'm going to say this upfront. I didn't like how Rennie's story ended in the book. I didn't think he got what he had coming to him, personally. For all his misdeeds, and how he'd tried so hard to justify them, I really wanted him to have his eyes opened to the fact that he was the villain, because I don't know that he really knew that. But that was book-Rennie. TV show Rennie sure does a fine job of rallying the town and lifting their spirits, but I don't get the sense that he's trying to convince himself that what he's doing is what's best for the town. I'm not seeing a lot of justification on his part, which strikes me as different from book-Rennie. With that said, I still hope the show finds a way to resolve his story in some satisfying way. I might have suggested redemption as an option for the character, but then he killed Dodee. He deserves a kick to the face for that -- Barbie got that instead, thanks to Phil -- and even then, I don't know if there's any coming back for him as a character. So the other option is justice, and part of that is being exposed for what he is. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen.

On a random aside, I loved it when Carolyn told Norrie she's always on her side. And Ben gets the funny moment of the night for trying to cover up the mini-dome with a lot of blankets to shut it up. Unintentionally funny moment of the night goes to Junior, whose post-kiss comment to Angie reminded me of Forrest Gump. She tasted like cigarettes.

Will the monarch be crowned next Monday night? And more importantly, will the dome come up? My prediction is yes. I think the season could very well end with the dome coming up. But mainly because I like the idea of the series restarting a bit next season, with Chester's Mill somewhat recovered from the last dome. Or maybe it won't come up, and this story will continue with the townspeople trying to build their own society under the dome.

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Is there any chance the residents of Chester's Mill will get out from under the dome? Not if Big Jim Rennie can help it. We've seen Under the Dome veer further and further away from Stephen King's book with each episode, and that's kind of ok. King's novel is certainly the kind of story that can be adjusted and adapted fairly liberally without losing its core. Still, the above preview for next Monday's "Exigent Circumstances" does hint at some shades of the novel.

As the video reminds us, there are just two episodes left in the first season of Under the Dome. What can we expect from Exigent Circumstances? Well, for one thing, Carolyn's back! The last time we saw her, she was listlessly grieving the loss of her wife, but she has a daughter to look after and it looks like Norrie's in some trouble. She ends up Jim Rennie's target, and considering what the mini-dome club saw when they touched the dome together, that may end up being a bad thing for Rennie, though it looks like he has the upper hand this week, and he's willing to use that hand to slam Norrie against a wall. Not cool, Rennie! But I did like his menacing grin.

And based on one snippet of the video and the official episode description, it looks like Rennie's very enthusiastic about rallying the town against Barbie over the multiple murders Rennie framed him for.

CBS' announcement for the episode also mentions something about Barbie needing to protect Julia "before Big Jim finds her." Not sure what's going on there, as Julia was still down for the count from being shot the last time we saw her. But there really never is a dull moment for these characters.

The video also teases Junior touching the dome, and later slamming into someone. Was that Barbie? Those two seem due for another altercation, and with Barbie on the run, Junior might want to be the one to take him down.

Finally, we get to those book references. This is where things get a little bit spoilery, so if you haven't read the book, you might want to stop reading here! The first is Rennie setting Barbie up to be tried and possibly executed. That rings true to the book, as does Rennie's growing appreciation for the power he has in his town while the dome is down. And then - bigger spoiler alert! - there's the sight of Rennie setting a fire. Those who read the book know just how bad a fire can get under the dome...

For those of you looking for an escape from what's left of the summer festivities, there are some great options on Amazon Prime. Last week, we offered you a selection of excellent, currently-airing TV shows consisting of three seasons or fewer, which were available streaming on Netflix. Today, we have a new list with the same criteria for shows that are not available to Amazon Prime subscribers. Those looking to get caught up on some worth-watching TV series ahead of their respective new seasons may want to give these a try.

Grimm

What if the creepy fairytales your parents told you when you were young were real? Grimm explores that scenario in it's own fun, procedural way, centering on Detective Nick Burkhardt, a man who discovers he's a "Grimm," a descendant of a long line of hunters who track down the supernatural beings that inspired the classic (and in some cases, lesser known) fairytales. While these villainous monsters and beasts look just like regular people to the rest of us, Nick can see them for what they really are, and it's up to him to protect his community from the dangers they pose, while also keeping the nature of his calling a secret from his friends and co-workers. That includes his girlfriend Juliette (Bitsie Tulloch) and detective partner Hank (Russell Hornsby). But Nick proves to be something of a modern Grimm, which means he's openminded enough to associate with some of the dark and dangerous beasts his kind occasionally hunts, including Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell), a "Blutbad" (or big-bad-wolf) who's sworn off his natural predatory diet and is living a clean life.

Nick, Monroe and their later-introduced Fuchsbau friend Rosalie (Bree Turner) make an unlikely trio, but a formidable one when it comes to facing off against dark and dangerous creatures. And it's the dynamic of this trio, added to Juliette and Hank's involvement, that makes Grimm work so well, particularly in the later part of the first season and throughout the second season when we really start to see the show and characters settling into a groove. Season 2 rewards viewers even further as it grows more and more serialized. Amazon recently added Season 2, so you can get completely caught up before the series returns for Season 3 this October.

Sherlock

You might have heard of this next one, if not the current contemporary adaptation of Sherlock Holmes from the BBC (that seems unlikely at this point), then certainly from the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the many previous interpretations to hit both the big and small screens. That makes it sound like the character is played out but Benedict Cumberbatch plays the resident of 221B Baker St. unlike any other we've seen and is an absolute joy to watch.

Of course, the socially inept for-hire practitioner of deduction is nothing without his partner in crime-solving and The World's End's Martin Freeman as Dr. John Watson (military surgeon turned amateur blogger and sleuth/sounding board) is equally compelling. As are the rest of the ensemble, including several legit Inspectors who don't like the eccentric 'consultant' sniffing around their crime scenes. It’s quite a delight, with the winning characterizations, endless amounts of enjoyable banter and impeccably structured, emotional storytelling.

The third series of Sherlock is gearing up to air on its native BBC (always a few months before surfacing on PBS in the US) so there's plenty of time to catch up with the six, 90 minute episodes. Yep, it's basically six Sherlock Holmes movie mysteries - all on Amazon Prime ready to be watched - and they're all better than a lot theatrical releases. Guy Ritchie's got nothing on Paul McGuigan. Created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Doctor Who Moffat, Sherlock stars Cumberbatch, Freeman, Una Stubbs, Rupert Graves, Louise Brealey and Andrew Scott.

USA’s Suits currently airs over at the cable station on Tuesday evenings. The fun, fast-paced lawyer drama has made a nice niche for itself in the lineup over three seasons, and if you aren’t one of the 2 million plus people who watch the show each week, now might be the time to change your tune. Don’t get us wrong, Suits has a ridiculous premise that would probably never actually happen in real life. A young man named Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) has an eidetic memory, which leads him to rock out in court cases and helps him to nab a position as a lawyer at an exclusive firm, despite the fact that he has no law degree. Like we said, ridiculous. But Mike’s big secret, his partnership with the smooth-talking legal wiz Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) and the many inner workings of the law firm make Suits a little more glitzy than any other workplace show.

Amazon Prime currently has the first two seasons of Suits available for your viewing pleasure, which means if you get super excited about the series, you won’t be able to catch up completely. The good news is, if you’re into Season 3, you can always keep an eye out for reruns on USA, or go ahead and pay $1.99 to buy the brand new episodes via the Amazon Instant Video.

American Horror Story

The great thing about American Horror Story is that it completely resets each year. Each season, a new set of characters are introduced and a new story is told and resolved throughout the course of that season. Season 1, unofficially titled American Horror Story: Murder House, introduces us to the Harmon family, consisting of Ben (Dylan McDermott), Vivien (Connie Britton) and their teen daughter Violet (Taissa Farmiga). Ben and Vivien are coming off some marital troubles after Ben cheated, and Violet's in the distant teen stage where she feels disconnected to everything. Little do they know that their beautiful new home has a violent history and on that will literally come back to haunt them at every turn. What's real and what isn't? That's for viewers and the Harmons to try to figure out as they attempt to rekindle their relationships with one another and move past their issues while finding themselves drawn further and further into the haunted house mystery that's unfolding around them. Jessica Lange plays Constance Langdon, the Harmon's meddling and unsettling neighbor, while Evan Peters plays Tate, a teen who befriends Violet.

As we mentioned, each season resets, so you don't even technically need to watch Season 1 to dive into the third season, American Horror Story: Coven, when it debuts this fall. But Murder House is so much fun - particularly if you're a horror fan - that it's well worth a look and it'll give you an idea of just how dark and twisted Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk take this series. American Horror Story: Asylum (Season 2) isn't available free for Prime subscribers yet, but Amazon does have it available for purchase.

Under the Dome

Television fans might be obsessing over Walt and Hank drama on Breaking Bad’s final few episodes, but there’s an additional place viewers should be looking to catch Dean Norris: Under The Dome. The bald-headed character actor has guested on an incredible number of programs over the years, but in the aforementioned BB and Under The Dome, he’s finally found places to shine. In the latter, he plays a used car dealer and a shady politician with buried secrets trying to keep a small town afloat after it’s suddenly and mysteriously placed under a giant dome.

Exactly why the town finds itself encased in a binding, impenetrable structure is unclear, but the search for answers is just as fascinating as the relationships between the diverse residents of Chester’s Mill. From cops trying to keep order to army veterans with hidden missions, they’ve all got their own agendas, and interested viewers will find more than enough reasons to come back. Under the Dome is currently airing its first season on CBS, and Amazon Prime's been adding the latest episode to its streaming video selection each week. With big ratings for the summer and plenty of avenues to go in, Under The Dome should be around for awhile, and with only ten produced episodes, now is the perfect time to catch up via Amazon Prime’s streaming service as the first season begins to wrap up on CBS.

Awkward

High school sucks for a lot of teens. That's a story that's been told before, but Lauren Iungerich still managed to breathe new life into the concept with Awkward, a teen dramedy that reflects traces of some of the best and brightest teen tales from past decades, including a bit of Freaks and Geeks-like humor, My So Called Life-angst and maybe some traces of John Hughes heartfelt romantic comedy. Ashley Rickards plays Jenna Hamilton, a beautiful but awkward teen whose combined quirkiness and introspection makes for a very entertaining TV series. Our introduction to Jenna includes an unsatisfying closet-set first sexual encounter while away at summer camp and a bathroom accident that comes off looking like a suicide attempt, which essentially wrecks Jenna's social status at school. As she pines for Matty, her first-time guy who still barely knows she's alive, she's also trying to live down her new reputation, all while walking around in a ridiculous arm cast.

It's Jenna's narrative added to the candid way the series approaches teen life - not sugar-coating it but also not wallowing in angsty gloom - that makes Awkward so much fun to watch, even for those of us who are long past our own teen years, with no desire to relive them. The series is currently on hiatus amidst its third season, but Amazon has Seasons 1 and 2 available on Prime and you can get caught up on Season 3's first ten episodes over at MTV's website before the show returns for the rest of Season 3 this October.

Luther

BBC's Luther follows Idris Elba's Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) John Luther working cases for the Serious (and Serial) Crime Unit in London. Part genius, part lunatic and always mesmerizing, the title character will do just about anything to get his man (or woman) after coming back from a work related trauma. But forget his mental health, the cases always take top priority even if they push him to the brink. Or past. Elba, famous for his turn as Stringer Bell on The Wire and about to portray Nelson Mandela, recently won the Best actor in a Miniseries Golden Globe for the role, having also been nominated the previous year not to mention nods for two consecutive Emmys in the same category.

Series 1 and 2 are on Amazon Prime with the four-part third season airing one episode a night on September 3-6 at 10:00pm ET on BBC America. Sienna Guillory also joined the cast for Season 3, if you needed even more reasons to start watching. And if you don't have BBC America but need to continue mainlining Luther after 'Priming' the first two, you can already purchase the Series 3 DVD provided you own a region-free player. First head over to Amazon Prime to catch-up with one of the best characters on TV. At only 10 installments, the drama is a time-flies situation and you'll also quickly see why people have been clamoring for Idris Elba to be the first black Bond or Batman. Created by Neil Cross, Luther stars Elba, Ruth Wilson Warren Brown, Dermot Crowley and Michael Smiley.

Workaholics

If you're not already watching Comedy Central's Workaholics, well, that's just super loose butthole. See, if you watched the 'office' comedy you would know whether that was a good or bad thing. Okay, you can probably guess and the best way to be tight butthole (not have, be) is to catch up on all the shenanigans you've been missing. The first two seasons of Workaholics are available to watch on Amazon Prime with the third also streaming for a small price. But who knows, by the time you get around to the Season 3, especially if you check out a few of the other possibly time consuming recommendations on the list, it could be gratis. If you can't wait, you can always opt to pay per episode on Amazon for the third season or check out the Blu before the fourth premieres sometime in 2014.

Workaholics was co-created by stars, writers, and executive producers Blake Anderson, Adam Devine, Anders Holm and (director) Kyle Newacheck, and follows the comedic exploits of three hard partying, aimless telemarketers named, uh, named Blake, Adam and Anders (the Ders). The trio not only share an office space but also happen to live together and have for what seems like a long, long time. The chemistry between the three real life friends and former roommates is incredible (translating to the best panel at this past Comic-Con) and, even though the situations are heightened, the series probably doesn't stray too far from their reality. They even shot on location at their house. It's like Curb Your Enthusiasm with a lazy millennial point of view. Oh, and it's also super funny. It might entrap you.

Key & Peele

If you still have the power of childish innocence, or just a really great sense of humor, then you'll want to check out Comedy Central's sketch comedy series Key & Peele, because there are no shortage of laughs to be found there. The series is created by and stars MADtv's Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele and features hilarious pre-taped sketches as well as a bit of stand-up from the two stars. Key and Peele's excellent chemistry with one another is part of what makes their sketches work so well. The other part has to do with their stand-up and the way they incorporate their jokes into the sketches, most of which are timed perfectly to squeeze as many laughs as possible out of a joke and then wrap up before the bit gets tired. In addition to great original sketches in each episode, there's also the brilliant recurring sketch involving Luther, President Obama's "Anger translator" whose job it is to say it like Obama really means it. Those alone are worth watching, but the show is full if great moments.

Key & Peele is headed into its third season next month. In the meantime, Amazon has both Seasons 1 and 2 available for free for Prime subscribers.

Downton Abbey

Since it made its U.S. debut on PBS, Downton Abbey has earned a pretty sizable viewership, making the period drama one of the most successful TV imports in recent memory. Even if you missed the show during its first few seasons on PBS, you can still catch up on the drama before it returns to the schedule in 2014, thanks to Amazon Prime and its digital streaming service.

The years just before and after WWI were difficult for Britain’s entitled classes as the economy and the role of big households in English society changed. This description might sound like boring period politics, but Downton Abbey throws in plenty of romance and enough cutting remarks to keep things interesting over three seasons. Interesting really isn’t a strong enough adjective, though. Viewers who begin watching will likely find the drama to be as addicting as baked goods left in the break room. You’ll swoon when new love interests enter the picture and die a little inside every time Mary (Michelle Dockery) and Matthew (Dan Stevens) miss romantic opportunities. Thanks to Amazon Prime, you won’t even have to wait nearly a year for new episodes. You can power through all three available seasons quickly or linger with the characters for as long as you might want.

How The States Got Their Shapes

Over the past few years, the History Channel has gotten a lot of backlash over its decision to start implementing reality programs and more informal and goofy looks at history at the expense of the dry documentaries type historical examinations we all grew up watching. Well, How The States Got Their Shapes is the perfect middle ground. Featuring host Brian Unger, the program uses the unusual borders between states to tell fascinating and hilarious tales from throughout the history of the United States.

Viewers who tune into the History channel want to learn. They want to be amazed, surprised, wowed and hit with facts they can tell their buddies around the water cooler, but they don’t want to fall asleep while being whispered that information. How The States Got Their Shapes is able to accomplish all of that. It’s high energy and sometimes even highbrow. Episodes air regularly on H2, but they’ve also begun streaming on Amazon Prime. If you’re a history buff or just someone who wants to know more about the why Michigan and Ohio almost declared war over each other thanks to Toledo, you should fire the show up immediately.

Spoilers from tonight's episode of Under the Dome ("Let the Games Begin") ahead!

One of the things I really appreciate about Under the Dome is that it doesn't make us wait very long to give us the answers to the questions it raises. It falls shy of being a procedural by stretching out mysteries beyond the length of an episode, but it doesn't take its suspense to Lost extremes in stacking mystery upon mystery and depending on its audience to keep it all straight and hold for more information. Take the fourth hand. Last week's episode left us wondering who the fourth hand belonged to, and some of us assuming it had to be Junior Rennie. He seemed the obvious candidate, after what we learned about his mother's paintings, tacked on to tonight's revelation that Junior once had a seizure at a school dance. Sure enough, he was.

But before that, Dodee made the mistake of touching the mini dome and zapping herself unconscious. Poor Dodee. Angie, Joe and Norrie were wise enough to lie to Dodee and borrow her generator suggestion as a fast lie to explain how she burned her hand and knocked herself out. I'm not even sure why Dodee getting zapped had to happen other than to send them all to the hospital where Angie was to be reminded of Junior's seizure, which apparently happened years ago, but links him to the rest of them in mini-dome seizure club. After that, Angie let slip to Joe (and Norrie) that Junior kidnapped her the week prior. That information wasn't supposed to be shared, but when you're under the dome, stuff happens. Or Angie has a big mouth. Either way, it was bound to come out. And after it did, they looked at the paintings and then decided to set aside their anger at Junior for being a creepy kidnapper so they could invite him on a mini dome double-date. Junior accepted the invite and sure enough, his hand fit the dome-print perfectly.

Before we get to the dometarium, as I'm going to call it, let's talk about the mini dome's latest resident. What's the deal with the caterpillar inside mini dome? It seems likely that it's the referenced monarch that's to be crowned, once the little guy finishes its metamorphosis. It's not time yet. Time may be of great importance here, if my theory turns out to be correct. When all four hands were on mini dome, it projected a dome of stars around the foursome inside the barn. As someone pointed out, it's a constellation. But what does it mean? Is there a way to calculate a date based on the position of the stars? If so, that's my guess - that the dome's trying to give them a clue about a certain date by showing them a star constellation.

Let's move on to Barbie, and go back to what I was saying about things getting resolved relatively quickly on this show. Granted, Barbie killing Peter is a situation that goes back to the pilot, and we all knew sooner or later Julia was going to find out and it would be bad. Maxine's arrival and threats to expose Barbie brought that deep dark secret to the surface, and rather than dangling it in front of our faces while Maxine blackmailed Barbie for episodes to come, Julia found out about it mostly on her own. And it may not be that bad.

As it turns out, Peter took out a life insurance policy on himself. Julia discovered the policy, and between that and Peter's missing gun, and knowing his gambling issues and his dealings with Barbie, she pieced it all together. Her husband got himself killed intentionally so that Julia could benefit from the life insurance money. It's a sad outcome, and while I wouldn't say it redeems Peter, I do think it will change how Julia feels about her husband and the relationship they had. He still sort of left her, but he tried to leave her with some money.

Julia told Barbie there can be no more secrets between them, which indicates that she's willing to tentatively move forward with Barbie and maybe even forgive him. Knowing that Peter was trying to die does at least take a little bit of the blame off Barbie, but given his involvement, I can't imagine she's going to forget, even if she does forgive. So we'll have to wait and see what happens between them going forward. At the very least, I hope Barbie comes clean about anything else Julia should know or might find out about him from Max, since she's probably feeling pretty scorned by now. And something tells me Barbie has more than one skeleton in his closet.

Tonight we learned that Maxine's running her own black market at the old cement factory, which includes fighting and gambling, but not prostitution. I found her comment about prostitution interesting, and that made more sense later on during Big Jim's part of the episode. We'll get to that. Junior tried to sneak into the cement factory where Max's operation was running, but he's too blue to get through that door right now. Meanwhile Barbie had an all access pass, as Maxine gave him the grand tour, talking about living well and making the most out of this situation. And then she signed Barbie up for a fight, because he's the big man on campus these days and she knew people would want to see that.

Barbie threw the fight after taking more than a few punches and delivering some of his own. And then he blew Maxine off. But now that Julia knows about Peter, at least Maxine can't hold that over to him. Know who else knows about Peter? Big Jim Rennie. While he was off trying to dig up dirt on Maxine, he came across her mother, who as it happens, went to school with Rennie way back when, before she got pregnant, dropped out and traded her body to pay the bills. That explain's Max's aversion to prostitution. Max's mother, who goes by the name of Agatha now, seemed pretty bitter over what she went through after high school, and pulled a gun on Jim, not over that, but for snooping around. Rennie figured out that Agatha wouldn't actually kill him and managed to get the rifle from her. But at some point during his conversation with the woman, she mentioned Barbie killing Dr. Peter Shumway, so Rennie knows about that, which probably isn't good for Barbie at all.

Agatha's not the kind of woman who can pull the trigger when push comes to shove, but Rennie's a man who can. Or he's the kind of man who will leave a bound woman floating in a lake, where she may sink if she isn't able to swim for safety. When Jim was transporting Agatha away from her little island, she fell off the boat, and after a moment's hesitation to consider his options, Rennie decided to leave her in the water. Will she manage to swim to safety or are we supposed to assume that she's a goner? If her body's found with her hands tied, people will know she was murdered. And if she does survive, Rennie's in deep trouble.

But Rennie's in deep trouble anyway, because Linda now knows about the drug business he, Coggins and Max were running. Duke was involved in that, but he was only in it as part of an arrangement to keep the drugs out of Chester's Mill. It does put some responsibility on his hands, and it seems like Duke knew that, which explains why he kept it a secret, and why he kept a confession in a safety deposit box. Now Linda knows that Jim's involved in a big drug business, and she confronted him at the end of tonight's episode, but agreed to let him go and come in on his own in the morning, after he sleeps off the exhaustion of (possibly) letting a woman drown. Every day is a busy day for Jim Rennie.

Linda letting Rennie go feels like a cliffhanger, in that something tells me he either won't show up at the Sheriff's department the next morning as promised, or something big will happen to distract Linda and the rest of the town, and Jim's crimes will have to wait. There are no shortage of distractions and events under the dome.

Three episodes left! I'll leave you with a question: Do you think that the dome will come up by the end of the first season? We know there will be a second season, but there's no reason the dome couldn't lift temporarily and then drop down again before Season 2. Or will the dome stay down for the duration of the series?

On one hand, I'm ok with new characters being introduced to Under the Dome partway through the first season. After all, only eight days have gone by, dome-time, so it's reasonable to consider that there are interesting characters hiding out all over town just waiting to be discovered. On the other hand, the introduction of Natalie Zea's Maxine did make me think that a series like this will need to be careful with such devices, lest Under the Dome stumble into Nikki and Paulo territory. (Lost reference). But as I said, we're still in the first season and only 8 days have passed, so Maxine gets a pass. But make a note of that, Under the Dome, lest you find yourself burying your newly introduced hotties alive to make amends.

Let's move on to the title of the episode: "The Fourth Hand." This references the necessary fourth hand required to unlock minidome, after which I anticipate the black egg to hatch a chicken that Joe will actually be able to catch and cook at his sister's diner. It's all coming together! Ok, not really. Obviously, something is supposed to happen when Angie, Joe, Norrie and the fourth hand touch the mini dome, which is now hidden away in a barn. Is it way too obvious to assume that Junior is the fourth hand? He does have his very own portrait of himself, painted by his mother pre-suicide, standing among pink stars. I'd say he's the likely candidate. Did Angie realize that? Or are they going to embark on a manhunt before eventually luring Junior into the barn to play patty cake with mini dome?

Moving on to bigger problems, Big Jim Rennie's got himself an arsenal. After a drugged up guy got trigger happy, Jim opted to invite the residents of Chester's Mill to lay down their arms, and by lay them down, he meant bring them to him where he could keep them safe and sound in his bunker. Giving up the weapons wasn't required, but an offer of extra food enticed many to volunteer their weapons. Ted was not one of them. Ted's a widower whose wife and child were killed by the dome when their car slammed into it. Depressed and suicidal, Ted planned to kill himself with a grenade, but Rennie wrestled it away from him and put the pin back in before it was too late.

Seeing Big Jim and Barbie working together again, we could almost picture them as friends, but not quite. It seems obvious that neither trusts the other. But in an interesting turn, Maxine showed up and later revealed that she knows both of them. Big Jim's shady dealings tie him to Zea's character, while Barbie knows her both professionally and personally. From their conversation, it sounds like Barbie and Maxine had a lot of sex a few months back. Not only does Maxine have that nugget of information to use against Julia if she so chooses, but she also knows Barbie killed Peter, which she appears to be using to keep Barbie at her side. Was anyone else hoping Barbie would just tell Julia about Peter tonight? Of course, it would probably wreck that little romance, but Maxine seems like the wrong woman to be forced to work for, especially in a situation like this where Barbie has seemed determined to work strictly freelance. What's he going to be like taking orders from someone?

So Maxine has dealings with Jim and Barbie. And she has something to do with the propane, which has something to do with a drug called Rapture, which Reverend Coggins was selling. Linda uncovered all of this - minus Maxine's connections with Jim and Barbie - during tonight's episode. So at the very least, she should have a vague idea that Maxine is involved in the propane situation and possibly the drug situation.

Other tidbits from the episode:

Angie's tattoo is blue and yellow, so it's not actually a monarch butterfly.

Dodee's Yagi device is supposedly broken. Either that or Dodee has just retreated to her radio station where she can avoid the kids and any other weirdness abound and wait for Phil to recover from his latest ailment. (Check out our interview with actor Jolene Purdy here to learn a few things about Dodee!)

Truman the dog returned! He peed on a bunch of stuff, scared up some birds and discovered the new location of the mini dome. I like to imagine Truman is going to save the whole town someday. Or maybe he'll sail a boat into the edge of the dome and then let himself out the emergency exit.

Finally, Joe walked in his sleep to bring the mini dome from the woods to the barn. If the mini dome can be transported, does that mean they could dig up the big dome and move it somewhere? Maybe then they could roll it across the country like a great big hamster ball. Sounds messy.

Jolene Purdy's Under the Dome character Dodee has proven to be one of the brainier characters inside the dome. What she lacks in people skills, she makes up for in radio smarts, and that's already proven to be useful in the efforts to unlock the mystery of the dome. We spoke with actor Jolene Purdy this week about her character and what's ahead for the residents of Chester's Mill, including the butterfly twist and whether or not there's a romantic future for Dodee and Phil.

This interview is mild on big spoilers, but Purdy does discuss the show, with some vague hints at what's ahead, so read on with that in mind!

During last Monday's episode, we got our biggest clue yet that butterflies play a mysterious role in the dome's existence. What does "The Monarch will be crowned" mean? We don't know yet, but Purdy did talk about the butterfly connection within the series:

Purdy credits the writers for keeping the viewers guessing, but the characters are also in the dark, and from what she tells us, they'll be wondering what the "monarch" clue means:

Those who've read the book know why it's a good thing Dodee hasn't really come face to face with Junior Rennie. In Stephen King's story, the "Dodee" character crosses Junior Rennie's path just once and things did not go well for her at all. Fortunately for the TV show's Dodee, it doesn't sound like she and Junior will meet anytime in the near future. "I love Alexander Koch," Purdy told me. "He is amazing. Me and Nicholas Strong, who plays Phil and Alex, we would hang out so much. And I really wanted to do scenes with him and it just kind of never happened. I mean, there's crossing of paths but so far we haven't really interacted much as Junior and Dodee. Which I'm thankful for, because he's a little crazy on the show."

As for what happened to the Dodee in the book - book spoilers/comparisons ahead - Purdy admitted she only read the beginning of the book. If you're familiar with King's story, you know she wouldn't have needed to get that far into the novel to learn her character's fate. Fortunately, the Dodee in the TV show has lasted much longer, but Purdy was a bit alarmed when she discovered how brief book-Dodee's appearance was:

Of everyone in the show, Dodee seems closest to Phil Bushey, the radio station DJ. We've seen them have some great moments together since the series started, which made me wonder if maybe there was something more developing between these two. Alas, it's not meant to be. At least not anytime soon. Purdy says they're like brother and sister. "You know what, they're just best of buds," she said. "Like brother and sister. They compliment each other so well. Dodee isn't really a people person. I love people, but Dodee loves technology. So we're a little bit different in that way. But Phil is her go-to person. The person that she can really let down her guard with and be honest with. They have this love that's not quite romantic."

Purdy also credits Phil for exposing Dodee to music. "We met her mom," Purdy said. "And her mother is deaf. And so that is a little side to her character, because she works in a radio station and if her mother was deaf growing up, what kind of music did she listen to growing up as a hearing child of a deaf mother. Phil also exposed that kind of world to her, which is another reason that their friendship is so strong."

One of the things Purdy mentioned more than once was that Dodee's more comfortable around technology than she is around people. "It's Dodee's battle between people and technology and the dome," she told me. "And she's really trying to figure out interpersonal relationships with people other than Phil."

Will we see Dodee back in Season 2? Purdy couldn't say one way or the other, but she sounds optimistic, saying, "I haven't heard that I'm not so, I hope so."

Here's the episode info for Monday night's "The Fourth Hand".

Watch the preview for the episode here.

With just a handful of episodes of Under the Dome left for the series' first season, we're left to wonder what could possibly go wrong next! Judging by the latest preview, a fair guess would be more seizures, gun problems and a grenade. Things could get explosive.

Is collecting all of the guns in Chester's Mill a good idea? On one hand, there might be some constitutional gripes to be made there, but on the other hand, with five people dying by gunfire during last week's episode, it's not hard to see why those in charge might want to eliminate any future gun-related altercations. And on a third hand, where are they going to put all of the collected guns? That could be a recipe for disaster, or more literally, an extremely dangerous arsenal that someone with the wrong intentions could get access to.

Moving on to another bit that was teased in the preview, Angie has a seizure, complete with the "Pink stars are falling in lines" line. Last week's episode teased the importance of Angie, with the mysterious "monarch will be crowned" clue that Julia got from dome-Joe while visiting the little dome. There seems to be a butterfly twist happening here, and it's unclear whether it's Angie's tattoo alone that we were supposed to be focused on or the butterfly connection being tied to Angie in particular. That's one mystery that has yet to be solved.

Finally, it looks like Big Jim Rennie's found himself in a scary situation. There's a guy with a grenade talking about how the dome's already taken enough from him. Then he pulls the pin on the grenade. Now, here's the thing that's unclear to me. Jim screams "no" and dives at him. Did he think he could stop him? Or was it an act of heroism? Because throwing oneself onto a live grenade is something a hero would do. Of course in this case, it probably wouldn't do much good to the guy who pulled the pin, considering he'd be under the grenade when it went off. But maybe there are people nearby that Rennie was trying to save? Just some theories to throw out there. It's impossible to get a good read on Rennie. One minute, he's getting tanked and torching a guy, the next minute, he's on his knees and crying.

Speaking of Big Jim, he's mentioned in the episode's description, which notes that he and Barbie might have something (or someone) in common…

Maxine is played by Justified and The Following's Natalie Zea. Check her out in the photo below:

When we learned that Zea was set to appear in Under the Dome, word was, her character had dry bad intentions. So it should be interesting to see how Maxine fits into the story.

It also looks like Barbie and Linda are going to be doing some snooping around…

Is that a casket in Barbie's photo? What's going on there?

Power plays are all the rage under the dome these days, aren't they? Whoever has the resources has the power. Ollie Dinsmore figured that out fast, but some people are a bit too transparent for their own good, making fast decisions and hoping no one's noticing. I'm mainly referring to Big Jim Rennie, who tries to pass himself off as a man of the people, but doesn't seem to be fooling anyone that matters.

Spoilers from Under the Dome's "Thicker than Water" ahead!

Before we get into tonight's crisis, let's talk about Junior Rennie. Can someone please stop giving him a gun already? First it was Linda, who made the mistake of deputizing him after One display of good character from Junior earned him a badge and a weapon. Then he kills a guy he should have detained and Linda puts him on probation. Now, I get that she's short-staffed, and ok, the Dundee brothers weren't great guys, but shouldn't Junior's actions have demonstrated to Linda that he can't be trusted with a gun or that level of authority? Has Linda even tried to find some deputies to back her up? In Linda's defense, she did take away Junior's gun tonight, but probation seems like a mild sentence for what he did. That guy's execution should've been Junior's last official act as a local lawman.

Linda took the gun away. Ollie Dinsmore gave it back. Or he gave him Jim Rennie's gun. That brings us to the crisis of the week. Food supplies are running low, and they can't grow food without water, so Big Jim Rennie, Junior, Linda, Barbie and another deputy headed out to Dinsmore's farm to enforce eminent domain on the area, which would give them control of Dinsmore's well. Unfortunately for them, even if Junior had been armed they would've been out-manned by Ollie's guys. The deputy whose name I don't remember got shot in the kneecap in their attempt to take hold of the well, and that sent the rest of them heading for the hills. Well, all except for Junior, who decided to join Ollie's team, which meant getting to disarm his father. A nice little bit of revenge for Big Jim disowning him earlier.

While Jim concocted a plan to bring more guys out to Dinsmore's farm, Barbie and Linda came up with a better plan. Apparently, Dinsmore's well was syphoning water from other wells in the area. Destroying his well would divert water back to those other wells and give the town's water supply back to the people. I have no idea if that's really how wells and underground waterways actually work, so I'll believe it's as simple as blowing the well to pieces.

Barbie went about his plan, but wasn't able to stop Rennie from going about his, so the well blew while Rennie's small army was fighting Dinsmore's. And the second the well was out of the picture, Dinsmore's guys scattered like… people who scatter when they realize they have no reason to fight anymore. Apparently, the only reason they were people were fighting on Dinsmore's side was because he had the well. And let's face it, under these conditions, it's not a bad idea to side with the guy who has the water.

Dinsmore's play with the well was an attempt to dethrone Rennie. He thought if he had the well, it wouldn't be long before people pushed for him to be leader and Rennie would be without any power. Maybe that would've worked if there weren't enough people quick to act against this plan. What's more interesting is that Barbie later called Rennie out for making a play for the well, costing the lives of five people in the process. Barbie realized Big Jim wasn't in it for the town. He was after the well for the same reason Dinsmore was keeping such a tight grip on it. But blowing the well up fixed that issue as there's now water available to the public through the other wells, which I assume were up and running the second Dinsmore's well blew. But does it really fix the food problem? What if destroying the well messes up Dinsmore's whole irrigation system and his crops die. Then there's no food anyway. Maybe they didn't think this through, especially considering Dinsmore and his wealth of farmer's knowledge is now out of the picture.

During Junior's brief involvement with Dinsmore, he learned that his mother didn't die in a car accident. She committed suicide by crashing her car into a true. Dinsmore told Junior part of the story and Jim filled in the blanks when Junior had him at gunpoint. And when it came time to pull the trigger, Junior pulled it on Dinsmore, who was about to make a move. Was he going to kill Rennie? Maybe. Either way, Junior's body count just went up. Ollie Dinsmore's dead. Granted, he wasn't the nicest guy, but still. That's one more dead person in Chester's Mill, and one less farmer around to grow things.

Junior may have opted not to kill his father, but they're still on the outs, as Junior settled into a jail cell, announcing to Linda that has no home. He also claims he joined Dinsmore's team in an attempt to Trojan-horse them and take them down from within. Seems like a weak lie to me, but I guess it doesn't matter. In the end, Linda still shouldn't trust Junior.

In other news, Norrie is grieving over her mother's death and taking it out on Joe. She told him she thought it was their fault her mother died and that she didn't want to see him anymore. That left the two teens split up for the episode. Joe went off with Julia to show her the egg, while Norrie bonded with Angie, who changed her outfit! She's got a new shirt and either a clean pair of skinny jeans or the same ones she had on earlier. Either way, she's looking freshened up, which is cause to celebrate.

Angie cheered Norrie up by chucking snow-globes at the dome. While Angie presumably-temporarily released herself of the dream of escaping Chester's Mill, Norrie seemed to release some sadness by breaking stuff. And then she broke down and cried over her mother's death. It seemed like that needed to happen. She went through the stages, including anger at her mother for having taken her out of Los Angeles and across the country where they're now trapped. And then she succumbed to the guilt, blaming herself once again, maybe because she and Joe touched the dome, or because she was the reason they were in Chester's Mill to begin with. After which she hugged and apologized to Joe. So I'm thinking Norrie's still not ok, but maybe she'll at least have Joe at her side to get through the worst of it.

Joe's adventure with Julia led to the discovery that the mini-dome egg is now sparkling with pink stars. I'd say they're falling in lines, but they're floating upwards. Unless it's some weird reflection situation. When Julia touched the dome, she saw another Joe, dressed exactly like the one standing near her, who announced that "The monarch will be crowned."

I'll admit, it took me a few minutes to make the connection between monarch and butterflies. But I didn't connect it with Angie's tattoo. My thought was of the butterflies that flocked to the dome a few episodes back. That may have been when we first saw Angie's tattoo. If I remember correctly, there was a cut from the butterflies outside the dome to Angie's tattoo when she was still in the bunker. The thought vaguely crossed my mind at the time that there was a connection, but then I dismissed it as being nothing more than a clever cut away. It can't be a coincidence that they did it again tonight, especially as we heard the words repeated and the camera seemed to hold on Angie. Monarch butterflies are pretty common in North America from what I know. But is Angie the referenced monarch in some sort of figurative sense? Does the dome have something to do with her?

Once again, I'm curious to see if the dome's existence is to bring certain people together. Maybe it fell down at the exact moment that certain people - Norrie, Joe, Angie, Barbie, etc- all happened to be in the same vicinity at the same time. That's just a theory I'm working on. In the meantime, it seems pretty obvious that monarch is a reference to butterfly. And Angie has a butterfly tattoo.

We'll end this with a random observation. Julia said "I can't imagine losing a spouse like that" to Barbie when he was digging Alice's grave. Just a little reminder that she has yet to learn that she's a widow. That lie's still hanging out there, and it was difficult not to think about it as Barbie climbed into bed next to Julia. They're getting quite cozy, those two. How long before she finds out?

"Food fight takes on a whole new meaning," the trailer for next Monday night's episode of Under the Dome states. Depleting resources have been an ongoing issue under the dome, with water being a major issue, and now food, which is technically "thicker than water." That's a nod to the episode title, "Thicker than Water," which may very well refer to the food, and also family matters. Blood is also thicker than water.

Looking at the preview, it seems Ollie Dinsmore's still on a major power trip. At this point, Dinsmore's taking some of the spotlight off Big Jim Rennie in terms of power-crazed characters. Never mind that Jim set a guy on fire, right? Ollie Dinsmore's hogging all the food! Ok, to be fair, it's his food. But he seems to be enjoying the control a bit too much, doesn't he? We'll have to see how that plays out in this week's episode.

During the Under the Dome panel at Comic-Con, Dean Norris commented on Junior Rennie's mental instability, saying he gets his dark side from his mother. It looks like this Monday's episode will be the one that addresses that mystery. Here's the official episode description.

The preview showed Junior expressing the urge to kill someone. I'm assuming it's his father he's referring to, as we later see Big Jim crying and apologizing. Is it an act? Or is he really sorry about something? Maybe something that has to do with Junior's mother? All of this new material that wasn't in the book, so even though of us who have read Stephen King's story are in the dark here.

There's also the matter of the mini-dome. What powers does it have? Well, we know it can communicate with people. It showed Norrie her mother and tipped her off that she needed to get to her to say goodbye before she died. What if the Dome showed Julia Peter? What if it's causing her to question the truth about her husband's whereabouts?

That brings us to these photos. If I remember the pilot correctly, Barbie buried Peter in the woods, so that wouldn't be the hole he's digging here, right? Plus, Julia's there, but there's a drink next to the hole, which I'm guessing she brought to him. If he was unearthing her dead husband, I doubt she'd be bringing him a refreshment...

Maybe he's digging a grave for Alice? Or has someone else died? Here's a shot of Joe standing by a pile of dirt - possibly the filled in hole…

And here are a couple of other stills from the episode...

Under the Dome airs Monday at 10:00 p.m. Et on CBS.

Though its numbers have declined a bit since its premiere, Under the Dome continues to be a ratings success for CBS. This Monday night's episode, for example, was the highest rated in adults 25-54 and Monday's most-watched program. So it's understandable that CBS would be confident enough in their partnership with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television to want to push forward with another series set for next summer. This week, CBS announced that they've given a straight-to-series order for Extant, which will be produced by Amblin Television and CBS Television Studios, and is set to air Summer 2014.

Based on a script by Steven Spielberg, Greg Walker and Mickey Fisher, and executive produced by Brooklyn Weaver, Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank, Extant is described as "a futuristic thriller about a female astronaut trying to reconnect with her family when she returns after a year in outer space." It sounds like the things she's experienced in space will lead to events that "ultimately will change the course of human history." Sounds about right for Spielberg, whose past TV credits include Terra Nova, The River, Smash, Falling Skies, and Under the Dome. There are some hits and misses in that lot, but no one can accuse him of not going big with his small screen endeavors.

It's interesting that she refers to to Under the Dome as "high-quality event programming," considering we initially thought UTD was going to be a one-season series, but that turned out not to be the case. With the series' recent renewal, it's looking like Under the Dome will be a full series. With that said, I'm still holding out hope that the writers have planned a bit more closure for this first season's story than what we might see in a typical series. I'd like to get the sense that I've been given a mostly complete story with the option to return for more next year. If that's the case, I'd still consider Under the Dome "event programming." That's a tangent though. Getting back to Extant, the premise is a bit on the vague side, in terms of the "experiences" referenced in the description. Are we talking aliens? Alternate dimensions? Or something else? With Spielberg involved, it could be anything. The sky (and beyond) is the limit. But it sounds like it's set up to be another thrilling story for viewers to indulge in throughout the summer, as we have been with UTD.

Forgoing the pilot process and pushing forward with a straight-to-series order shows CBS' confidence in Extant, and given Under the Dome's success, that's no surprise. CBS has no reason not to try to double their bet. Extant is one more thing to look forward to next summer, along with the second season of Under the Dome and Fox's event series 24: Live Another Day.

The dome giveth and the dome taketh away. While the crisis-of-the-week was somewhat isolated to a small cluster of people, tonight's episode of Under the Dome ("Imperfect Circles") had a substantial body count, with one major character taking their final breaths before the episode's end. That's as vague as I can be before the obvious spoiler warning. If you haven't seen tonight's episode of UTD, turn back now!

CBS wasn't shy about telling us that the episode would see the start of one life and the end of another. So those of us who read the official episode description knew a death was coming, but we didn't know if it'd be a major character or some random person introduced for the purpose of being killed off. Like the guy Jim Rennie torched tonight. Is anyone mourning his loss? Not really. The focus on that scenario wasn't on the man but on Jim Rennie getting really drunk and setting a guy on fire just to prove he's still the man. The only thing he left out was the "Got'em" line that Junior dropped after picking off one of the Dundee brothers. Like I said, a lot of bodies tonight.

The major crisis of the week was with Harriet. Odd choice of name for a young character, no? Are we supposed to tie Harriet with Truman, the dog? Is there some presidential connection at work there in those two character names, or am I just grasping at straws to try to make sense of naming a young woman Harriet. Let's move on…

Harriet is Julia's neighbor and she's very pregnant. She came by Julia's house begging for yogurt, interrupting Julia and Barbie's morning-after snuggle time. Yes, Julia and Barbie took their kiss all the way to the bedroom and enjoyed some intimate smiley-moments in the morning before the pregnant woman came by for yogurt. Later, Harriet thought she saw her husband and wandered toward him, only to find herself touching the dome and instantly going into labor. Julia rallied the troops (Barbie, Alice and Carolyn) and they helped Harriet give birth. There was some minor trouble with the umbilical cord but they got past that and the little baby girl was born. By that time, Alice was showing signs of illness.

We should go back a step here and note that Alice was doing ok at the start of the episode. She was out of the woods after last week's insulin fiasco, and she and Carolyn had a very loving moment together, which probably should have been a warning that something bad was going to happen. Elsewhere, Norrie and Joe were out in the woods trying to make the dome do stuff. You know those apathetic teenagers who don't want to do anything but sit around the house all day? These two aren't them. The closest thing they got to acting like average teens tonight was when they made out against the dome. It didn't do anything, but they both seemed to enjoy it. And then they discovered Dome Junior.

Dome Junior was buried under a pile of leaves, and if Joe's right, it's the nucleus of Big Dome. Inside Junior is a black egg that doesn't respond to commands, but is willing to communicate. It showed a quick glimpse of Alice standing nearby - appearing out of nowhere very briefly - that told Norrie she needed to get to her mother. Norrie was at her mother's side just as she was about to die. Maybe Alice's heart attack had to do with her illness, but she seemed to think it had to do with the dome and the birth of the baby (a.k.a. Alice 2.0). And let's face it, she's probably right. Alice had her heart attack right after the baby was born.

The last we saw of Dome Junior's egg, it was glowing purple in response to Norrie pressing her hands up against Big Dome and begging it not to take her mother. So what happens next? Does Alice come back to life? Or is she gone for good? From a writing standpoint, Alice's death does eliminate any further (relevant) diabetic crises down the line. So at the very least, the writers wouldn't have to worry about trying to get around Alice's next required insulin dosage. But from a character standpoint, it leaves Carolyn and Norrie brokenhearted. And from a story standpoint, it leaves us wondering why the dome felt it needed to take a life when so many of them are being eliminated through more violent means. Were the Dundee brothers not enough? Or the guy Rennie killed? Or Rose? Or anyone else who's died since the dome came down?

That brings us to the rest of the episode:

Picking up where last week's cliffhanger left off, Jim Rennie let Angie go after telling Junior to stay away from her or he'd make him sorry. Angie spent the episode dealing with Rose's body and the diner, along with Ben, Joe's friend. We learned that Jim owns' Sweetbriar Rose diner, apparently. Which may or may not prove to be relevant beyond tonight's episode. And Angie finally reunited with her brother, who barely seemed to notice she wasn't around.

Ollie Dinsmore's holding a lot over the town these days. He has a well. He has crops. And he has the mysterious stockpile of propane, some (all?) of which was torched tonight when Rennie drank a whole bottle of whiskey (or something brown) and set the guy guarding the propane on fire.

Big Jim wasn't the only one to commit murder tonight. After the Dundee brothers' killed Rose, Linda and Junior set out to track them down. Junior may or may not have gone by the book on this (not that he's ever been trained to be a deputy) if not for Linda mentioning that the two men tried to rape Angie. With that in mind, it seemed obvious that Junior was out for blood. When Linda and Junior cornered the two men and tried to apprehend them, the Dundees opened fire. Well, one of them did. Linda shot the guy who was shooting at her, while Junior chased after the one who ran. When the guy fell down and promised he'd go quietly, pretty much begging for his life, Junior responded by aiming his rifle and putting two bullets into him. His casual "got 'em" response demonstrated absolutely no remorse for unnecessarily killing the guy, who seemed like he was still almost a kid. As if to confirm that the kill was vengeance for what the guy and his brother almost did to Angie, Junior got back to Angie and assured her neither of those guys would come near her again. I think he was going for gallant, but it really just came off as creepy.

The question is, did Linda see it? I mean, did she really see it? Or is she going to force the situation out of her mind and try to convince herself that he did what he had to because she really can't afford to lose her only other deputy?

And that wraps it up. We're left to wonder why the baby dome egg is glowing, why Alice died and whether or not Angie will ever change her clothes or get a shower. Until next week…

Ready for the biggest twists? That's what the preview for next Monday night's episode of Under the Dome ("Imperfect Circles") promises. We also get a tease of some of the dome-related shenanigans yet to come for the series. From the official episode description, the dome giveth and the dome taketh away…

So let's look at the preview as it relates to the episode description. Last Monday night's episode revealed that Big Jim and Ollie Dinsmore were at odds. In the preview, it looks like Ollie's reveling in the realization that he finally has the upper hand, and he's happy to wrap that hand around the throat of Chester's Mill. Is it the well that's the issue? Or is Rennie looking to Dinsmore for something else? Either way, that may be the referenced issue that has Jim looking to take matters into his own hands when he feels his authority slipping away. We already know Rennie's willing to take lives if it means getting his way. Is Dinsmore going to follow in the reverend's shoes? Whether or not Dinsmore's related to Jim's slipping authority, it looks like Big Jim's going to take a beating at some point in the episode.

And then there's the mentioned baby on the way and the life that's taken just as a newborn arrives. Does someone just drop dead? What's that all about? I was thinking maybe the dome has some resident rule that doesn't allow anyone new in without taking someone out, but people have died as a direct result of the dome. Duke and Coggins are examples of that. So doesn't the dome actually owe Chester's Mill a few people?

Finally, not mentioned in the description but revealed in the preview, it looks like there's more weirdness in store for Prince and Princess Dome, Joe and Norrie. They're out in the woods and they're feeling weird when lo and behold, they find a pile of leaves? What's that about? Having read the book, I have my suspicions.

I'm actually still not convinced that this season won't end with the dome coming up, even with the news that the series has been picked up for a second season. Is there any reason this part of the story can't run its course and get resolved only to have the dome come crashing back down on Chester's Mill in Season 2? The upside to that would be just that - the dome comes crashing down again. Because let's face it, that's one of the cooler effects featured in the series so far. Besides, the dome coming up and then back down again would offer an opportunity to refresh supplies, characters and plot. Just a theory. Maybe the dome will stay down and everyone will live off Dinsmore's crops.

Under the Dome airs Mondays at 10:00 p.m. ET on CBS.

The dome may not be showing any signs of cracking, but the same can not be said about the state of Chester's Mill. After a missile failed to penetrate the dome, people are starting to fully grasp the severity of the situation. This dome isn't going anywhere anytime soon and there's only so much food, water and energy to go around. There's even less insulin, which posed a pretty major problem for Alice. That was just a crisis waiting to happen, and during "The Endless Thirst," it did.

Every week there's been a new crisis under the dome, some more familiar to those of us who've read the books than others. Tonight's crises involved the mentioned insulin situation for Alice, which led to the water shortage and less directly, the supermarket run.

We'll start with Alice, since she accidentally triggered the water situation. She's out of insulin, which led to her being feverish and disoriented enough to wander in front of a truck that just so happened to be driving through town. Were there appliances that needed to be delivered? Whatever. In his attempt to avoid hitting Alice, the truck driver hit the town water tower, causing an instant water shortage. We'll get to that problem in a minute. While Carolyn and Alice were at the hospital, Norrie and Joe set out to find more insulin, using stolen medical information as their guide. There are nearly two dozen diabetics in Chester's Mill, so it stood to reason that there might be some insulin out there, though it's just as reasonable to consider that all of it was spoken for.

Norrie and Joe got a shotgun pulled on them by one diabetic who'd already used up all of his insulin. And at another house, they found more than a few doses, which belonged to a child barely old enough to inject himself. As desperate as Norrie was to save her mother, she couldn't steal medicine from a kid. Well, not all of his medicine. She took one bottle and left the rest just as the kid's mother came home and ordered them to leave. So Alice is ok for now, but what happens when she's due for her next dose?

While this was going on, the town of Chester's Mill turned to chaos as people began to panic over dwindling supplies. Fresh off celebrating not being blown to bits by the missile that demolished the area outside the dome but left Chester's Mill untouched, the residents' concerns about the water supply turned to concerns about food, which led to a run on the grocery store. Linda, Barbie and Junior attempted to restore order, but it was a lost cause. Or almost lost.

Rose was killed by two looters who came into her diner to raid her freezer. One of them beat her to death with a bat, which was pretty horrific, though not entirely out of place when we consider the dark nature of the source material, particularly as it relates to the town riot. Rose's death is relevant not only because it creates more fugitives for the local law to track down, but also because she was the only person Angie told about Junior Rennie kidnapping her, and Big Jim's involvement. Is it weird to admit that I had a strong feeling the moment Rose said she believed Angie that she was either lying or going to die soon? Maybe it was because of the way Rose didn't seem to want to believe Jim would have locked her up again, or the fact that it was just Rose and Angie in the room at the time. Something about it seemed off, I guess. As though this situation wasn't over for Angie, one way or the other.

Angie was tonight's big cliffhanger, as she sat with Big Jim Rennie, contemplating the deal he was offering her. If she keeps silent about Junior's mental instability and his locking her in the bunker, Jim will see that she gets anything she wants or needs. He's essentially offering her the opportunity to blackmail him. Angie's response was to say she'll think about it, which just seemed crazy, all things considered. As ridiculous as hitting Junior over the head with a snow globe, in fact. I like Angie, but she doesn't seem to know how to assess her immediate situation. At the start of the episode, Junior seemed to be softening up toward the whole situation. She might have been able to ease her way out of the room and away from Junior without resorting to violence. But we'll give her a pass for panic on that one. But what exactly did she think her options were when Big Jim offered her that deal at the end of the episode? Did she think if she said no he was just going to let her go? "Yeah, ok, you think about it," Big Jim would say. "Go on home, have a bath and get back to us on your decision, or else head to the sheriff's department and report Junior and me. Either/or." Not likely. But we didn't get to see what Jim's response would be because Junior showed up and stared them both down until the credits rolled.

As for the water shortage, though the lake water was polluted by methane, and Ollie Dinsmore was less than wiling to cooperate with Big Jim Rennie to let the town use his well, the dome fixed that issue by letting it rain. Or condensation kicked in just in the nick of time. Either way, the rain showed up just as Linda was about to shoot one of the looters and the town got busy bucketing water. Another crisis averted for now. Not sure what will happen about the food shortage, but that may be addressed next week, along with the death of Rose. I suspect most people involved in the looting will feel some guilt over that loss, considering how well liked she seemed to be. I'd like to see how Big Jim deals with it if and when they catch the guys who were responsible.

What else did we learn from the episode? Thanks to Dodie's radio gadgetry, she and Julia were able to figure out that there was some kind of signal coming from inside the dome, which they accidentally tracked to Joe and Norrie, revealing that these two have some kind of connection to the dome. After re-activating the radio signals by touching the dome together, the two kids showed Julia and Dodie the video of their seizure. Later, in private, the two women agreed not to say a word to anyone about this discovery. Given the chaos that ensued at the supermarket, who knows what people would do if they thought Joe and Norrie had something to do with the dome?

We also learned that Ollie Dinsmore had some kind of fence dispute fifteen years ago that put him at odds with Big JIm Rennie.

Finally, Julia and Barbie kissed! That seemed inevitable. They're both too pretty not to spark, and now that Julia thinks Peter left her, she probably feels like she's off the hook with her marriage. And now that she and Barbie have finally kissed, it seems like it's only a matter of time before she learns he had a hand in Peter's death. Speaking of which, we saw a bit more of Barbie's temper tonight when he was chasing down and attacking a looter who hit him with a can of soda, and later when he was fighting one of the guys that attacked Rose and Angie. Is it me, or does Barbie seem a little unstable? During both incidents, it seemed like he lost his mind for a moment, which isn't good. Is that the dome? Or does he have some anger issues he needs to work on? Either way, at the very least, he appears to know he shouldn't be wearing a badge, which is more than can be said about Junior Rennie.

By the Book

The supermarket riot is most surely inspired by one of the darker scenes in Stephen King's book, though things played out a little bit differently. Rose dying at the hands of looters was a definite shift. As was Angie's involvement in that scenario, but that's always going to be the case as long as Angie's around.

Joe and Norrie's connection to the dome seems like a bit of a twist. The seizures exist in the book but I don't remember that really going anywhere beyond prophesying the pink stars and the general time frame for when things were going to come to a head. I'm wondering if maybe in the TV series, the dome exists to bring Norrie and Joe together. What if the dome's purpose is to force these two kids together to fulfill some bigger purpose? That would be an interesting twists, wouldn't it?

And that about covers it. We have cause to celebrate today, not only because it rained inside the dome, but because CBS has officially renewed the series for a second season. And Stephen King's going to write the Season 2 premiere episode, which is even more reason to celebrate the renewal. The series is burning through story pretty quickly already, so it's exciting to know the author will be actively involved in whatever new content is generated for the story going forward.

Though it started out looking like a summer-long "event series" for CBS, we've known for a while now that the small screen adaptation of Stephen King's Under the Dome could be extended beyond the run of a season. Between the writers' comments about the possibility that the story could move forward, to the recent mention that Season 1 will end with a cliffhanger, not to mention the show's ratings this summer so far, renewal was looking more and more like a probability. And today comes confirmation. Not only is Season 2 a go, but Stephen King will write the season premiere!

GiveMeMyRemote dropped this little piece of news today, stating that Under the Dome has officially been confirmed for a second season. We were hoping we'd hear word of this at Comic-Con, but it wasn't meant to be, though we did hear about the mentioned finale cliffhanger there, which was an indication that the writers were moving forward as though there was a solid chance that the show would as well. Fortunately, we didn't have to wait much longer than that. Even better news is word that King himself will pen the Season 2 premiere.

Word of a second season further indicates that the series will continue to branch out and deviate from the novel on which it's based. King himself has shown support of the changes so far. But what does a second season mean for the story? We've heard that King once envisioned the story to span months or years with the residents of Chester's Mill trapped beneath the dome for an extended period of time. Of course, if you read the novel, you know that his story only goes for a couple of weeks before the situation peaks. The TV series is already looking like it will surpass that time-frame in its first season, but does a second season mean the dome won't come up anytime soon? It's hard to say, really. Given the "rules" of the dome, there's only so much time the residents could believably be trapped under there before supplies and food begin to run out, right? And then what? This show could veer into greater apocalyptic territory if that's the case. Or maybe the dome will come up and then drop back down again at some future point, allowing the opportunity to refresh supplies (and bring some outsiders in). We really don't know what the writers have planned in terms of where the story will go. And given all of the changes we've already seen to the plot, there's no reason to assume things will end the way they did in the book. So we'll just have to wait and see.

The sixth episode of the first season airs tonight, and based on the preview, it looks like at least part of it will visit the supermarket run, which is one of the darker moments from the book:

Another day, another crisis under the dome! Those of us who attended the Under the Dome Comic-Con panel on Sunday had the opportunity to see tonight's episode, which saw the residents of Chester's Mill visited by loved ones and estranged family members. And tonight I can actually talk about it in detail since it aired. If you haven't seen tonight's episode, titled "Blue On Blue," consider yourselves spoiler warned!

The dome continues to be a catalyst for drama, but how directly is the Dome interfering in people's lives? Joe and Norrie might not be the only two people receiving messages from the Dome. Either that, or Reverend Coggins' "Moab" message was merely his hearing aid picking up some frequency from outside the dome, but I'm not sure hearing aids work that way. So let's say it was the dome warning him of "Moab," that's one more mystery to explore, though it won't be Coggins exploring it. His arc ended tonight as Big Jim decided it was time to eliminate one more unpredictable scenario for himself. But we'll get to that in a bit. Let's get back to Moab, which Coggins took to be a biblical reference, but may have actually been a warning of what was to come. Moab = M.O.A.B. or "Mother of all Bombs," as explained to us by Barbie. It seems "Visitor's Day" was really "Goodbye day" as family members were invited to see their loved ones one last time before the military shot a missile at a bomb, which would effectively demolish Chester's Mill, if it succeeded in penetrating the dome. Of course, it only succeeded in destroying the area outside the dome. When the dust literally settled, we could see the stark contrast of protected inside area and devastated outside area.

So, as relieved as the Chester's Mill residents likely are that they survived the blast, it's got to be twice as scary knowing this capsule can withstand such an assault. I also like to think it'll be awkward when they encounter the military people who essentially tried to kill them.

The "M.O.A.B." was this week's big threat, and as we've seen in previous weeks, that arc was effective in pushing the plot forward in a number of areas. Here's what happened while people were preparing for the end of the world.

Big Jim let Angie out of the bunker, but it's well worth noting that he made this decision only after he heard about the missile. He initially left her down there to think about his next move, which suggests there were alternative thoughts going on in his head. But with the missile on its way, he figured there was nothing to lose by letting her go. So the decision wasn't quite as merciful as it might have been otherwise, and tonight we saw Jim's murderous side when he pushed Coggins' ear against the dome, knowing his hearing aid would malfunction, and sure enough it did. Coggins (presumably) died not long after blood started spurting out of his ear. Gross. Big Jim killing Coggins fulfills one thing that happens in the book, though things happened a little bit differently in King's novel. But the general situation seems about the same.

We'd seen Coggins going off about sinners before. Last week, he was burning medication and this week he was preaching about "Moab." But we also know he's involved in whatever sneaky dealings Big Jim and other people in CM are trying to keep quiet. Tonight he mentioned something about helping drug dealers make their poison, which is one more big clue about that developing mystery.

Julia found out that Peter was going to leave her. He sent a letter to his sister telling her as much. So she's that much closer to learning what was going on with him, but she still doesn't know he's dead. Barbie was going to tell Julia, since the missile was coming, but he never got to it. We did see Barbie have a moment with Phil, and it seems he's haunted by an incident in the military involving friendly fire. At this point, it looks like Barbie's feeling a lot of remorse. It seems like it's only a matter of time before Julia finds out about Barbie's involvement in Peter's death. I'm thinking they might save that inevitably dramatic reveal until just as Julia and Barbie are crossing into more-than-friends territory. Romance seems inevitable for these two, and now that Julia knows Peter was leaving her, she might decide she's off the hook in terms of her marital obligations, right?

Speaking of romantic entanglements, Norrie and Joe kissed! And they didn't have a seizure doing it, which is interesting. It was a big episode for Norrie, who learned that her father isn't actually some anonymous sperm donor, but a man who had a relationship with Alice. Dad had pictures to support this, which he showed her through the dome on Visitor's Day. I thought it was kind of odd that this guy would surface now, showing up with photos and no way to actually speak to his daughter. Seemed like an inappropriate time to cause such major chaos in the personal lives of his daughter and ex-whatever without being able to really sit down and discuss it. But that was before we knew that Visitor's Day was actually Goodbye Day. If he thought this was the last time he was ever going to see his little girl, it's not hard to understand why he'd want to approach her and have some kind of communication with her before it was too late. Of course, we'll have to wait and see the fallout from this revelation.

Dodee and Phil had a sweet moment while dancing to Skeeter Davis' "End of the World," a great pick by Phil, who compiled a "last thing we'll ever hear" playlist, which also included some Beethoven. Phil is a lot more likable in the TV show than he was in the book, I'll say that much. And Dodee's "I hate you" comment makes me think these two are really just great friends, but who knows? Maybe there's another romance destined here.

Linda ignored her own rule about not letting anyone touch the dome by giving Rusty a kiss through the dome on Visitor's Day. She also had to reveal to her fiancé that his brother was dead.

And after Big Jim let Angie go, Junior - who's now badged and uniformed - quickly tracked her down and held her at gunpoint. Let's all celebrate Junior's keen detective skills, announcing "I knew you'd come here" when Angie found him waiting for her. In her bedroom. At her house. How he figured out that she'd go home, we don't know. I guess he's just that good. Sarcasm aside, Angie played the situation cool, not panicking as he pointed a gun at her. And when she found out the missile was coming, she seemed to give in and let Junior rest his head on her lap. So... is she forgiving him? Or was she just willing to put it all aside and let the world end? It'll be interesting to see where that picks up.

In other news, butterflies were flocking to the side of the dome at the start of the episode. It was a beautiful piece of special effects work, and did a nice job of mixing "pretty" with "creepy." But what was that all about? Dodee said something about insects using magnetic fields to navigate, so it could just be science at work here. Or maybe that was just one more example of the dome giving a warning, as it seemed like that was the place where the missile later hit. And at the end of the episode, there was just one lone butterfly left. A surviver-butterlfy… like Jim Rennie? He was the one left looking at it through the dome, past the spot of blood left by Coggins' ear. An eery image if ever there was one. See what I did there?

Finally, we found out that China threatened to attack the U.S., believing the dome was some kind of weapon in development. The president managed diffuse the situation, but it sounds like the dome's having a big impact on the world outside. At the very least, the residents of Chester's Mill can rest easier knowing that if China does attack, they're probably safe. The dome is impenetrable from bullets, trucks, planes and missiles. Then again, no one can get out, which still sucks.

By the Book

Without getting into end-of-the-book spoilers here, it's well worth acknowledging that "Visitor's Day" in Chester's Mill ended much differently in the book. So that's a major deviation. And as I mentioned, Coggins dies in the book at the hand of Rennie, though that happened differently. But the sentiment remained the same. The reverend was making trouble and sooner or later people were going to start listening. He's now one less person in Big Jim's way.

Here's a new poster for the series. It's quite mooving. (Sorry.)

It's Sunday and things at Comic-Con are starting to wind down, though there are still a few big panels set to take place. CBS' new summer series Under the Dome is one of them. For those of you who can't be here, I'll be doing the play-by-play of the panel here in Room 6BCF for you! Expected panelists include stars of the CBS drama, Dean Norris, Mike Vogel, Rachelle Lefevre, as well as executive producers Brian K. Vaughan, Neal Bear and Jack Bender.

Here's the full panel description:

2:16 p.m. - They're showing us Episode 5, so it'll be a bit before we have any updates, but stay tuned. We'll start live blogging once the Q&A starts!

Here are some very mild episode spoilers. This Monday's episode has the Dome residents enjoying "Visitor's Day." The military has brought outsiders up to the dome to see their loved ones. Junior Rennie's breaking in his new badge. Big Jim has to figure out what to do about Angie in the bunker now that he knows she's there. Julia learns more about what was going on with Peter. Norrie learns her mother lied about something major. And that's all just the start of this episode, as a new threat looms.

2:59 - The pane begins! Neil Baer says it's all about the characters and credits Stephen King for creating them. He says when they're writing the show, even they want to know what's going to happen next. Brian K. Vaughan says he's obsessed with Stephen King. Vaughan talks about being name-checked in the book. He says it's been a surreal journey.

3:01 - Rachelle is talking about an "Adam and Eve" moment in this week's episode. She points out the chemistry between Barbie and Julia. Mike Vogel says the writers have done a great job weaving push and pull that Barbie's gone through. Moderator points out that Junior's psychotic. Dean Norris says he's just misunderstood. And he jokes that Junior gets his dark side from his mother side. I thought he was joking but then he says we're going to learn more about Junior's mother and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

3:04 - Vaughan talking about King's original idea for UTD spanning years. King told Vaughan to use the TV experience to take the story and characters where he couldn't. Rachelle says the filter between her brain and mouth is limited. She was attracted to the idea of playing a character who had a lot of emotions. She's talking about Julia being pragmatic and needing answers. She thinks TV needs more strong female characters that aren't just reacting to the male story-lines around them or constantly at the whim of their feelings.

3:06 - Neil says there are some mysterious women about to show up. People we haven't met yet who are crucial to unfurling this story. Moderator asks Dean about Big Jim's response to seeing Angie in the bunker. Spoiler - he leaves her there, at least for a little bit. And then they discuss something darker that takes place during the episode for Big JIm, but it's too big of a spoiler, so I'm not going to repeat it.

3:08 - Vaughan says the script was written for Showtime but the show was produced for CBS so there was no editing necessary to bring the project from cable to network TV. Someone asked how deep the dome is. Vaughan says he doesn't know whether or not it's a sphere, but Neil says it'll be revealed in Episode 7. Dean Norris says it felt really fun to play a bad guy (switching over from playing Hank on Breaking Bad). Vaughan says there will be some secrets about the dome will be held back before the end of the season. November 5 for the DVD. They're shooting the season finale right now and it ends with "a hell of a cliffhanger" and if they're not lucky to get picked up for Season 2 fans will be left hanging. So - no confirmation of Season 2 yet, but it sounds like they're writing the show with the hopes of renewal.

3:12 - Vaughan points out that no one is safe on this show. Vaughan says King encouraged them to change the adaptation from book to screen. Vaughan says if we read the book and think we know what's coming, you don't.

And that's the end of the panel!

Monday's ratings are in, and while things are looking pretty sunny at CBS, one of NBC’s summer forays is not doing so hot. The former network has been boosted thanks to Under the Dome, a short summer series event that may be expanded into a second season now that the show's numbers are looking so good. The latter network is doing quite a bit worse in the ratings, thanks to a scripted series following a fake reality competition called Siberia.

Under the Dome dropped a little in the ratings after a couple of weeks of doing more than 11 million total viewers. Yesterday’s episode featured a breakout of meningitis in the small town of Chester’s Mill and plenty of audience members showed up to catch the show, which ended up pulling in 10.8 million total viewers and a 2.7 rating, holding pretty steady with last week’s ratings. According to THR, across the night CBS averaged 6.7 million total viewers, which was enough to beat ABC, a network that had both Mistresses and The Bachelorette on the schedule.

The latter two shows didn’t do horribly, however. Mistresses nabbed only 3.6 million total viewers, but the veteran series The Bachelorette did far better, pulling in 6.7 million total viewers. Overall, the network averaged 5.7 million total viewers, which means it didn’t manage to beat CBS, but the network doesn’t need to run home crying with its tail between its legs, either.

That colloquialism can be saved for NBC, which is doing decently with American Ninja Warriors and Get out Alive with Bear Gryllis, pulling in a 1.5 and 1.4 rating, respectively. However, when we weigh in the disaster that is Siberia, the numbers look far more dismal for the night. Siberia’s third episode only brought in 2.4 million total viewers and a dismal .8 rating in the 18-49 demographic. Additionally, both American Ninja Warriors and Get Out Alive dropped slightly down from last week’s ratings, leaving NBC in a disheartening third place. NBC managed to beat out Fox, but that’s less of an achievement when we consider Fox offered no original programming on Monday night.

Siberia’s fake reality premise had hints of Tropic Thunder in it when we first heard about the project, except in the NBC show’s case, it was more about a reality series going wrong than an off-the-rails movie project. The marketing for the show didn’t always make it clear that the fictional series was spoofing a reality show. Then, when the show actually hit the air, it became clear that Siberia is actually a poorly scripted version of a fake reality show, filled with shallow characters and not a whole lot of plot. Introductory episodes are almost never the best episode a series has to offer, but a couple of weeks later, the show still doesn’t seem to be piquing the interest of a whole lot of viewers. Audiences may end up getting extra episodes of Under the Dome, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Siberia’s lifespan was cut short.

Bad people were acting good and good people were acting… well, not so nice. I guess bad and good are relative terms under the dome, but things were looking a bit upside down for a while in "Outbreak." The picture was much clearer by the end of the episode, as ulterior motives were exposed. Spoilers if you haven't seen tonight's episode of Under the Dome!

It was probably only a matter of time before some kind of outbreak emerged under the dome, and sure enough it was meningitis that plagued Chester's Mill, rendering the unvaccinated to various degrees of sickness as resources were gathered. The only casualty by my count was Linda's grade school teacher, who gave up her antibiotics, insisting Linda take them, and died before more medicine had arrived. Said medicine was looted from the local pharmacy by the good reverend, who believed the illness was God's will… but I guess available medication was not. Rennie and Barbie shut Reverend's pill-burning party down and got the drugs back to the hospital in time to save everyone else.

Just as the dome seems to be a catalyst for the drama that exists beneath the mostly clear barrier, the outbreak seemed to instigate its own ripples of drama and conflict. Here's what went down during the mini-crisis:

Alice became the doctor in charge. She's a psychiatrist, but in absence of any other doctors, she's the best Chester's Mill has. And she held her own tonight, treating patients and also looking into Joe and Norrie's seizures. Most of Alice's attention was on the meningitis epidemic, but she has her own health issues to deal with, considering she's a diabetic and her insulin is low. Still, at the end of the episode, she stopped Carolyn from pilfering insulin on her behalf, assuring her that the dome wouldn't be there forever.

Joe and Norrie did a bit of experimenting with the seizures, videoing themselves holding hands to see if they could make another sync-seizure happen. And it worked, only when they looked at the video, in addition to seeing themselves reciting the "Pink stars are falling in lines" mantra, Joe also sat up during the seizure and put his finger to his lips, which they interpreted as the dome telling them not to tell anyone. Tell anyone what? The pink stars thing and the seizures aren't a secret. But maybe there's more to come and the dome's trying to communicate with them?

Julia spent the episode ignoring her symptoms and running around trying to get answers about Peter, whose name was on more than a few tongues tonight as he's one of the absent doctors. Between what she saw on Barbie's map, Phil Bushey's fever-ramblings and Junior Rennie being all too eager to rat out Barbie, Julia discovered the cabin, though she didn't really know what it had to do with Peter other than that it has something to do with him. At the cabin, she found paperwork that revealed that she and her husband are broke. All of their money is gone. That explains why Peter sold Phil his car, and maybe even why he was looking to hire a hit man.

Barbie gave Julia some of the truth, revealing that he's a debt collector (the rough kind) and that was collecting money from Peter. Julia said Peter never gambled, but Barbie had a voicemail from him setting up a meet-up, which was proof enough that he was involved in some shady dealings. Barbie didn't reveal that he accidentally killed Peter (or that Peter got himself shot by his own gun when wrestling with Barbie). It seemed like Julia had enough truth, and he doesn't really have any reason to believe she'd be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't his fault. Or not entirely his fault, anyway. So for now, Julia knows just enough to know Barbie wasn't up front with her from the beginning, considering she never told him he knew Peter to begin with. And she told him to find a new place to stay.

It was interesting, seeing the multiple sides of Barbie tonight. There's the guy who kicks around a recovering man's wheelchair asking for information - that's the Barbie who gets money from people. And then there's the guy who goes out of his way to save a sick woman and carrie her to safety. I kind of like that Barbie's not a cut-and-dry villain or hero.

It was also looking like maybe Junior Rennie had a decent side too. Tonight, his father tasked him with keeping the clinic quarantined, which he did with a rifle. As unstable as Junior is, it wasn't surprising to see him firing his gun and yelling orders. What was surprising was when Linda entered the room in her hospital gown looking tired and worried. It actually seemed like Junior was moved enough by the sight of her to come to his senses and reason with the angry mob, a task Linda struggled to do earlier in the episode. Junior singled out Mr. Dinsmore and reminded him of the time his wife made his family cornbread just after Junior's mother died. The story and his comments after reminded the group that they're all in this together.

Junior's successful efforts weren't unnoticed by Linda or unacknowledged by Big Jim, both of whom seemed impressed by the way he kept a cool head. And then Jim asked Junior if he ever thought of a career in law enforcement. Cue the creepy music. Junior may be cool-headed when he wants to be, but he's also a calculating guy. I'm thinking he saw Linda during that mob situation and realized he had a chance to show off in front of the only law left in town. He gave her an effective performance and earned himself a badge at the end of the episode. So not good!

Meanwhile, Angie pissed Junior off earlier by pretending to be nice to him as they reminisced a high school dance, only to stab him in the hand with the scissors she stole from the first aid kit last week. She later pissed off the plumbing enough to flood the bunker. On the bright side, the angry plumbing proved to be a microphone through which Angie could scream and Big Jim could hear. But I'm not so sure that'll help her. Big Jim heard the screaming and found Angie in the flooding bunker and that's where the episode ended. Now, he might let her go and expose his son's psychotic behavior to the town. Or he might just move her somewhere else in an effort to hide Junior's mental instability. There's a worse alternative to that, if Big Jim decides Angie needs dealing with in a more permanent way, but it's too soon to start speculating such dark alternatives.

In other news, there's still the mystery of the propane. The reverend dumped a bag of money on Big Jim's porch near the end of the episode tonight and told him he was washing his hands of their dirty little business. We're still waiting for more information on that mystery.

Four episodes into the series and what I'm really liking about the show so far is the resolution of certain plots, while others are coming to a boil. It works well for the pacing, introducing a crisis that needs to be dealt with, which keeps the action moving, so that the longer arcs (the propane, Angie, Peter, etc) can simmer a bit. We'll have to wait and see if that balance holds up as the series continues.

"They totally saw the dome coming," Joe's skater friend said, when referencing The Simpsons Movie during tonight's Under the Dome episode. Great little nod to the animated film that technically came out before Stephen King's book was published, and shares a very similar premise when factoring in the giant dome that falls upon Springfield. Were there scary Rennies trapped under the Springfield dome? What about a rogue deputy with a rifle? Chester's Mill has all that and then some.

Tonight was a great night for Big Jim Rennie, whose many faces were featured throughout "Manhunt." There's the face he wears for the town, rallying the townspeople and trying to show confidence that they'd track down Paul, the deputy who shot Freddie last week and then, tonight, managed to escape Linda's custody, lock her in the jail cell and take off with one of the sheriff's department's rifles. Paul spent the episode on the run, and with his military expertise, he might have evaded Jim's search party for a while. In fact, he even managed to shoot at least one of Rennie's guys, and later, he had Rennie in his sights, until Linda showed up and took him out. RIP Paul. And that's one less law enforcer in Chester's Mill, though it's probably safe to say he checked out the moment he fired off his weapon during "The Fire."

I want to say that Linda is capable of handling things at the Sheriff's department, mainly because she did track down Paul. But she was sort of the one to let him get past her in the first place. In the end, it really comes down to a very short-staffed Sheriff's department, and with Big Jim seeming to inch closer and closer to taking over, that may become an even bigger problem for Chester's Mill, considering there's a dark side to him that keeps revealing itself. On the bright side, we did see Linda push back at JIm when he tried to take charge, so at the very least, there's some resistance there.

Jim may have revealed his cards to Barbie tonight, depending on how much Barbie read into Jim's "eye for an eye" philosophy speech about making an example. That, added to Big Jim's story about taking out a bully and shattering his pelvis makes me think he's intent on letting Barbie know that he's not a man to be messed with… unlike his son. Jim may not know the full story about Junior and Barbie's fight, but he does know that his son took at least one punch to the face from this mysterious out-of-towner with military training. Jim seems to be playing nice with Barbie, but behind that smile, he may be trying to intimidate him. Or at the very least, trying to feel him out, maybe to see if this is a guy who can work with him, or who might work against him.

And then there's Junior. Poor Junior. Is it ok to feel sorry for the guy? I know he has a girl locked up in a bunker, which makes him pretty horrible as a person, but he's also kind of a mess. When Junior gave his father his own personal version of the story about the fight with Barbie, claiming Barbie is psycho and acting like he wasn't the one who instigated the fight, Jim's response was to bring up Junior's deceased mother and suggest that Junior's still hiding behind her skirt. Talk about cold. Knowing that Junior's mother passed away makes me wonder if that loss is at the root of his abandonment issues, assuming that's the reason he locked Angie up the moment she tried to walk away from him. Just a bit of armchair psychology for you there. Maybe he just has some serious issues to sort out. Or maybe the dome's making him crazy. Both Junior and Paul blamed the dome for the bad things that have been happening. Paul said the dome killed Freddie, and Junior spoke to the dome as though it were an actual person. So, is the dome making people crazy? Or is it just reflecting some of the mental instability that was already inside Chester's Mill to begin with? That is the question.

And what's up with the seizures? Tonight, it was Joe and Norrie who fell to the floor with a "Pink stars are falling in lines" synchronized-seizure. Neither was in direct proximity to the dome when it happened, but the seizure did seem to take place the moment they held hands. That seemed relevant.

Other happenings around the Dome

Joe may not have figured out that his sister has gone missing, but Angie seemed to figure out that being nice to Junior might get her further than angering him. She attempted to sweet talk him, first by encouraging him to find a way out of the dome, and later by helping bandage his knuckles, which he cut and bruised punching the dome. Junior's punches were about as effective as Paul's bullets, except no one got killed when he let out his anger.

Julia spent some time with Junior when she followed him underground and into the tunnels, where Junior was hoping to find a way out from under the dome. They had a loosely bonding moment when Julia revealed a mistake she'd made in her past. She may have noticed that Junior's a bit unstable, but she didn't seem particularly scared of him. At the very least, she stayed calm with him when they tried to find their way out, which they did. And during their time together, Junior revealed that it was Barbie who punched him in the face. He also put some suspicion into Julia's mind, which resulted in her later looking through Barbie's things and finding a map of Chester's Mill with a location marked off, indicating that he lied when he said he was just passing through.

Is that location the cabin where Barbie accidentally killed her husband? If that's the case, I won't be surprised at all of Julia ends up paying that place a visit and maybe finding something of Peter's that causes her to grow even more suspicious of Barbie. You know sooner or later she's going to find out.

Sounds like Revered Coggins might have some substance abuse issues. Big Jim paid him a visit in the hospital and then spoke to him later and asked him if he was clean. That has to be relevant. And we're still waiting for more clues about the propane and why Jim wanted Coggins to burn those invoices in Duke's house.

Finally, Norrie spent the episode lying about her background. And I spent the episode thinking she reminds me of a gothy Thora Birch. It seems she's a little embarrassed by having two mothers, as she lied to Joe about her parental situation and made up a story about having a musician father. Granted, it's not all that abnormal for a teen to wish they had cooler parents, but after the comments made toward Carolyn in the diner, I'm thinking she didn't love learning that her daughter denied her. That seems more likely to be resolved eventually than the potential for conflict that might arise of those men in the diner aren't the only two Chester's Mill's residents who have a problem with Carolyn and Alice's relationships. Being outsiders doesn't help. That's a problem these two women share with Barbie, who's already put himself on people's radars.

And that about covers it. I'm wondering if Joe's recent seizure and the fact that his generator broke will draw attention to the fact that the kid is all on his own. It actually just occurred to me that Joe McAlister is home alone. Based on this behind-the-scenes look at next week's episode ("Outbreak"), maybe the Wet Bandits found Angie...