Why Castle Rock is King

As good as 11.22.63 was and as bad as Under the Dome became, this is the Stephen King TV series fans have been waiting for. Castle Rock (streaming on Lightbox now) is a 10-part series that richly rewards familiarity with the extensive works of Maine’s main horrormeister.

Set in the fictional town of the title (which has been home to many of King’s tales over the years), it weaves a number of connections to his overall oeuvre into the narrative strand. There’s a certain infamous prison, characters with familiar surnames, visual nods (look out for a particular face in a picture frame) and references to incidents involving a rabid dog and a shopkeeper missing after a fire in an ‘‘oddity store’’.

At the centre of this story though, created by Lie to Me’s Dustin Thomason and Masters of Sex’s Sam Shaw (but with the crowd-pleasing fingerprints of JJ Abrams all over its fractured narrative), is Henry Deaver (Andre Holland). After briefly going missing as a child, Henry reluctantly returns to his hometown when he gets a call requesting his services as a criminal lawyer. The outgoing warden of Shawshank State Penitentiary, Dale Lacy (Terry O’Quinn), has committed suicide and, while seeking to address the overcrowded prison population, his successor (Ann Cusack) discovers a horrifying secret lurking in the disused F Block. Trapped inside a tank is an emaciated man (Bill Skarsgard) whose only utterance is Henry’s name.