The Stephen King Miniseries Everyone Forgot Is the One You Need to Watch Now

Stephen King and miniseries go together like rainy afternoons and a strong cup of tea. If you ask a horror fan to name the classics, you’ll probably get the usual nods: Salem's Lot, IT, and The Stand – all proper fixtures in the canon. Even The Shining, The Langoliers, and The Tommyknockers get their time in the sun every now and again. Trouble is, there are a handful of King TV projects that seem to have slipped through a crack in the floorboards, only to be largely ignored while more middling ones (looking at you, Bag of Bones) get discussed out of pure obligation.

Now, amongst the hidden gems that have been gathering dust, Rose Red really deserves another look. This one’s a full-fat haunted house miniseries from 2002, and honestly, it ticks pretty much every box a King fan could want.

Proper Haunted House Business

Broadcast as a three-night event on ABC over in America, Rose Red spins the yarn of a grandiose, overblown Seattle mansion – the sort of place that looks like it ought to have a curse all of its own. Built in 1906 by an oil baron (obviously), John Rimbauer, the house comes with a rich history of mysterious deaths and vanishings – 23, if you’re counting. When it’s not knocking off locals, Rose Red sits empty and festers, precisely the sort of thing that’d set any horror nerd’s pulse racing.

To get to the bottom of the eerie goings-on, in steps Joyce Reardon, a psychology professor (played by Nancy Travis). Her grand plan is delightfully on the nose: pull together a rag-tag bunch of psychics and paranormal types to poke around the house and see what decides to show itself.

A Cast You'd Actually Recognise These Days

For a so-called 'minor' King adaptation, the cast is absolutely jammed with talent. You've got:

• Julian Sands as Nick Hardaway, a psychic with a stiff upper lip
• Matt Ross as Emery Waterman, who you'll know from Silicon Valley
• Emily Deschanel as Pam Asbury, long before Bones
• Kevin Tighe as Vic Kandinsky, the grumpy but likeable sceptic
• Melanie Lynskey and Jimmi Simpson as two uni students dragged into the mayhem

Oh, and King himself pops up wearing a pizza delivery uniform, just in case you don’t spot him hiding in the background. Can't beat a bit of self-awareness.

Not Exactly a Fresh Plot, But It Works

I’ll say it now – if you’re after blistering originality, you might want to keep your expectations in check. Rose Red leans heavily on classic haunted house imagery, and there’s a clear line from this back through The Haunting (the black-and-white chiller from 1963, if you needed a reminder) and even King's own The Shining. There’s telekinesis, secret rooms, endless corridors, and all the standard-issue spectral nonsense, but somehow, it works better than you’d expect.

Real-Life Ghost Stories and Hollywood What-Ifs

King's inspiration went beyond the usual spooks and poltergeists. He borrowed liberally from the story of the actual Winchester Mystery House in California – that's a sprawling Victorian mansion, designed by a firearms heiress convinced angry ghosts were out to get her. It’s a notoriously odd place, all stairs leading to nowhere and doorways to brick walls. The Winchester film back in 2018 tried to dramatise it (with mixed results), but Rose Red nicks the premise wholesale and dials up the supernatural.

The path to getting Rose Red on telly is kind of a story in itself. Did you know it was originally meant to be a Spielberg film? Genuinely. Spielberg wanted King to write him a haunted house movie. King, the overachiever that he is, started scripting it in 1996, blending his own memories of spooky houses with bits nicked from The Haunting and the Winchester tale.

This is where it gets a little ridiculous: King wanted full-on horror; Spielberg wanted more popcorn thrills. They went back and forth, but it was never quite right for either of them. The thing sat on a shelf for a few years. By 1999, King tried again to get it made as a feature film, this time roping in Mark Carliner, who produced Storm of the Century. Then King was mown down by a car, which left him hospitalised for a month and took him a long while to recover. The accident changed the project's direction once again, and when King finally got back to writing, he decided Rose Red would work better as a TV miniseries anyway. As he put it, 'writing was better than any painkiller they gave me.' He hammered out the version that aired in 2002 – no extra screenwriters picking away at it, just unfiltered Stephen King.

One For The Hardcore King Collectors – That’s on YouTube

Even now, Rose Red doesn’t get half the credit it deserves. Sure, it’s overlong and a little shameless with its influences, but it’s leagues ahead of the majority of King’s other TV spin-offs. If you call yourself a fan, it’s well worth tracking down (the full miniseries is floating about on YouTube at time of writing – and for once it’s not in three-pixel resolution).