It's absolutely certain that if you've been a television critic for, ahem, several years, you'll have reviewed a number of shows based on the writings of Stephen King, America's most adapted, if not necessarily its most adaptable, author. (It's been just three months since the last one, “The Institute,” on MGM+.) The last float in this long parade premieres Sunday on HBO: It is “It: Welcome to Derry,” a prequel to the 2017 film “It” (and its 2019 sequel, “It: Chapter Two”) based on King's spooky 1986 clown novel, each of which was a package deal. (There was also a 1990 TV miniseries version.)
Developed by Andy Muschietti (director of the films), Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs, “Derry” is a brand extension rather than an adaptation, featuring a white-faced, circus-style clown named Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård, back from the movies) who lives in the sewers and comes every 27 years to feed on the fear of children; Fear is the favorite dish of many famous movie and white-face monsters. circus clowns have lost all goodwill in the culture. (No thanks to King. Or Krusty.) And while I suppose some of the series' points can be found in King's original 1,138-page novel, life is short and that will have to remain a guess. In any case, it's very much a piece of television, not what I'd call prestige television, despite a modicum of well-done horror effects, just ordinary, blue-collar TV with monsters. (Or a monster in many ways).
It's the year 1962 in Derry, Maine and everywhere else. (Subsequent prequel seasons will reportedly take place in 1935 and 1908.) The Cold War is heating up. Schoolchildren, forced to watch animated films about the effects of a nuclear explosion, crouch and hide under their desks (an exercise more psychological than practical). But the threat of annihilation has done nothing to curb their adolescent rituals. The thugs chase a target down the street. A group of snobby girls is called Pattycakes because they play cupcake and their leader is called Patty. On the other hand, there are the children we care about, the outsiders, united by unpopularity. It's a paradoxical quality of horror movies that being an outsider qualifies you as either a hero or a monster; insiders are usually just food. It's not that monsters are picky about who they eat.
We open in a movie theater. Robert Preston appears on screen in “The Music Man,” performing “Ya Got Trouble.” (Chronologically accurate foreshadowing!) In the audience is Matty (Miles Ekhardt), a boy too old to suck on a pacifier. He's chased from the movie theater (he's been sneaking in), it's a snowy night, and he accepts a ride from a seemingly normal family, who quickly turns abnormal. Suddenly, four months have passed and Matty is an officially missing child.
Taylour Paige, Blake Cameron James and Jovan Adepo play the Hanlon family, who have just moved to Derry, Maine.
(Brooke Palmer/HBO)
The series begins promisingly, creating (as in “It” or, um, “Stranger Things”) a company of young investigators. Phil (Jack Molloy Legault) has a lot of ideas about aliens and sex; Teddy (Mikkal Karim Fidler) is studious and serious and thinks about Matty. Lilly (Clara Stack) is called “crazy” because she spent time in a sanatorium, the King-canonical Juniper Hill Asylum, after her father died in an accident at a pickle factory. (Not played for laughs, although the pickle is perhaps the funniest of all foods.) Lilly thinks she heard Matty singing “Trouble” through her bathtub drain; Ronnie (Amanda Christine), the daughter of cinema projectionist Hank (Stephen Rider), has heard voices in the cinema tubes. The kids run the movie and supernatural chaos ensues. It's pretty crazy! Serious hallucinations… or not? – will afflict them throughout the series.
Meanwhile, Air Force Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) has been transferred to the local base, where secret activities are taking place involving (classic plot) the military's desire to claim and weaponize anything barely understood dangerous found in the woods. (His value for this operation is that he cannot feel fear, a result of brain injury.) The Hanlons, including his wife Charlotte (Taylour Paige), a civil rights activist in a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat, and their son Will (Blake Cameron James), are black (as are Ronnie and his father, who apparently represent 100% of the city of Derry's African-American population). “Don't look for trouble,” Leroy tells Charlotte, who replies, “There will be trouble wherever we go. That's the country you swore to defend with your life.” Will, who is a scientist, will befriend Rich (Arian S. Cartaya), an attractively goofy kid in a band uniform; Both will end up in the Pennywise case.
Typically, the kids, including Lilly's socially hopeless friend Marge (Matilda Lawler, the secret weapon of “Station Eleven” and “The Santas”), are the strongest element of the story and the show; Their energy overwhelms the obviousness of the narrative, and anything that takes us away from them, towards subplots that slow down the pace, is time worse spent.
What else? There's a Native American element, including the ancient history of the Indian burial ground, represented by Rose (Kimberly Guerrero), who runs a thrift store (called Second Hand Rose, in a nice nod to Fanny Brice) and whose indomitable air makes her a sort of counterpart and potential ally to Charlotte. Manifest destiny is mentioned, and the plot will conventionally posit native humility against white arrogance. Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) is a black military man with a tragic mental gift, cruelly used by his superiors, a type familiar to King. Racism is a recurring theme without becoming a consistent argument, with messages for 2025. (Rich: “This is America. You can't just jail people for nothing.” Will: “Are we talking about the same country?”)
Also: a statue of Paul Bunyan is going up in the city, and in fact, a 31-foot-tall statue of Bunyan was unveiled in Bangor, Maine, in 1959. This is mentioned a couple of times, so I'm imagining some kind of Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man scenario in the unseen back half of the series. Or something like that.
Horror, especially body horror (there are two monster birth sequences in the five out of nine episodes available for review), as you may have noticed, has moved from the margins to the center of popular (even high) culture, with A-list stars signing on and Oscar and Emmy nominations not unlikely. In fact, the good, cheap, disrespectful, unambitious variety of horror film has largely disappeared from the big screen. That “Welcome to Derry” is more of a cheesy B-movie than its creators would like to imagine, assembled from overworked tropes (somewhat excusable given the fact that King originated many of them) is more in its favor than not. Television is still a paradise for cheesiness. May it continue like this for a long time.
