The best Stephen King thriller nobody saw aired on a channel nobody had — all three seasons are now on Peacock

I know, I know — it feels like Stephen King adaptations are a never-ending buffet at this point, but the real trick is sorting the genuinely good ones from the duds. For every hit (I’d argue The Long Walk in 2025 is up there), there’s something like the 2017 Dark Tower that nobody’s ever going to put on a best-of list. Look closer, though, and you’ll notice a strange pattern: some of the most successful King adaptations aren’t even straight horror at all, but rather lean hard into drama or thriller territory. Think The Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, The Green Mile; big hitters, and not a haunted clown or possessed car in sight.

One absolute gem in that vein that slipped past almost everyone is Mr. Mercedes. Part of that’s down to the fact it first aired on the Audience network in the States — which is now, frankly, pushing up daisies. Lucky for us, it’s landed on Peacock, so you don’t need a VPN and a dodgy stream to watch it these days. If you’re after something with the tension levels of True Detective and a bit of that classic King character depth, this one deserves your attention. Brendan Gleeson leads as the gruff detective Bill Hodges, a name that’ll ring bells if you’re a King regular.

Mr. Mercedes aired on a tiny US network, but all three seasons are now available to binge on Peacock.

Serial Killers and Mind Games

Mr. Mercedes is loosely adapted from King’s Bill Hodges trilogy and it unfolds as a tightly wound crime thriller across three seasons — no filler, just pure plot. The premise: Gleeson’s Hodges is a retired cop haunted by an unsolved case where someone mowed down a crowd with a stolen Mercedes, then started tormenting him with creepy online messages years later. If that sounds like your standard cat-and-mouse game, you’re not wrong, but the execution here genuinely lifts it above the rest.

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Hodges isn’t your invincible detective type — he’s dealing with declining health, proper isolation, and the kind of mental fatigue that you don’t see in glossy American procedurals. The serial killer, Brady Hartsfield (played by Harry Treadaway), is equally compelling: easily one of TV’s more unnerving villains of recent years, and thanks to King’s source material, we spend a surprising amount of time inside his twisted head.

• Brendan Gleeson is pitch-perfect as Bill Hodges
• Harry Treadaway delivers as the sinister Brady Hartsfield
• Justine Lupe rounds out the cast as Holly Gibney, another King fan favourite

From start to finish, there’s barely a slow moment; the first season focuses on Hodges trying to unmask Hartsfield, with plenty of nerves and no shortage of real-world horror. The second season gets honestly bonkers: the killer is bedridden and supposedly in a coma, but still manages to cause proper havoc — and yes, there’s a psychic element that probably shouldn’t work, but somehow it all ties together. By season three, Hodges assembles his own sort of ragtag detective crew to take on a new murder case, shifting things just enough to keep it fresh but dials down none of the tension.

The Double Perspective

Where Mr. Mercedes stands out is in the structure: we’re not just seening everything from the detective’s viewpoint — we’re dragged right into the killer’s world as well. Season two especially pulls a bit of a trick, putting viewers inside Hartsfield’s mind while he’s comatose, pulling the strings in deeply disturbing ways. The show never gets lazy about making you care, either: the acting is more than a bit better than most cable thrillers, and the writing gives just enough room for moral complexity (not that you’ll ever be cheering for Hartsfield, but you can’t look away from his scenes either).

Forget big jump scares — this is all slow-burn dread, tension and psychological warfare with a dash of surreal horror that feels fully earned. If you’ve run out of True Detective episodes to rewatch, give this a go; it holds up brilliantly.

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