Stephen King's Underrated 2-Season Supernatural Horror Series Is Now Streaming On Netflix

Films like "The Shining," "The Green Mile," "The Shawshank Redemption," and "It" have become iconic for good reason, but many of the scariest Stephen King adaptations were actually made for the small screen. Some TV shows based on King's work have flown under the radar, and that's absolutely the case for the Hulu anthology series "Castle Rock," which came out in 2018 and is now available to stream on Netflix. It's not based on one particular book, but rather an iconic setting.

Produced by J.J. Abrams and King himself, "Castle Rock" takes place in the titular, fictional Maine town created by the prolific horror author. It was first used in King's 1979 novel "The Dead Zone" and has served as the setting for many other tales since. While Castle Rock isn't the only fictional place that King has developed for his books, it's become a center point of sorts. The location of other places — like Shawshank State Prison and Derry — are referred to by their proximity to Castle Rock.

"Castle Rock" boasts an impressive 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and amateur reviews were also generally solid, with the show attaining an audience score of 79% on the website. It also features several big-name actors from critically acclaimed Stephen King adaptations of years gone by. So why did the anthology series only last for two seasons? Was it axed prematurely? The real reason "Castle Rock" got canceled had nothing to do with the show itself or the viewership numbers — it got canned as a result of corporate movement.

One of the production companies behind the show was Warner Bros. Television, which worked with Hulu a lot back in the 2010s. However, when HBO Max launched in 2020, the company's priorities shifted and it was suddenly more focused on the WB-owned streamer. This spelled the end for "Castle Rock," though it didn't come as a surprise for those involved with the show: As reported by Deadline, the decision to wrap things up after two seasons was made long before Season 2 came to a close. "There were no expectations for a third installment," the Hollywood trade confirmed.

Each season of "Castle Rock" follows a different set of characters, some of whom are linked to famous names from Stephen King's oeuvre. Season 1 features a criminal attorney named Henry Matthew Deaver (André Holland), an inmate at Shawshank State Penitentiary known as The Kid (Pennywise actor Bill Skarsgård), an aspiring writer — and relative of "The Shining" protagonist Jack Torrance — named Diane Torrance (Jane Levy), a woman with telepathic and empathic abilities named Molly Strand (Melanie Lynskey), and Henry's estranged adoptive mother Ruth Deaver (Sissy Spacek, who played Carrie in the Stephen King film of the same name).

Season 2 follows nurse Annie Wilkes (Lizzy Caplan) and her daughter Joy (Elsie Fisher), who become stranded in Castle Rock. "The Shawshank Redemption" star Tim Robbins plays mob boss Reginald "Pop" Merrill, with Paul Sparks playing his nephew John "Ace" Merrill, who is in line to take the reins of the family's criminal empire. The Merrills clash with the local Somali community, which includes Abdi Howlwadaag (Barkhad Abdi) and Dr. Nadia Howlwadaag (Yusra Warsama), the medical director of the hospital in Jerusalem's Lot. Both seasons feature talented actors who breathe life into King's fictional town with their nuanced and committed performances.