When Stephen King and frequent collaborator Mike Flanagan announced a new film adaptation of King’s 1980 novella The Mist, most of us thought back to the 2007 movie starring Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden and Andre Braugher as neighbors who become trapped inside a local supermarket when an eerie mist (and the monsters it hides) descends upon their small Maine town. But that Frank Darabont-directed film isn’t the only time King’s ultra-grim tale has been adapted; in 2017, Spike aired a 10-episode TV series based on the story, starring The Gilded Age‘s Morgan Spector and Golden Globe winner Frances Conroy.

One of the many post-Lost series about a group of mismatched strangers trying to survive a difficult situation, The Mist lasted only one season and was largely been memory-holed by the public, including Stephen King fans. But was the series actually so bad?

What happened in The Mist TV series?

Debuting on June 22, 2017, The Mist told the story of Kevin Copeland (Spector), a resident of the small Maine town of Bridgeville with his wife Eve (Vikings star Alyssa Sutherland) and teen daughter Alex (Shining Vale‘s Gus Birney). The sudden descent of a mysterious, deadly mist drops the town — and the Copeland family — into chaos: Kevin is trapped at the police station with an amnesiac soldier who tried to warn the town about the encroaching mist and ended up locked in the jail for his trouble. Eve and Alex are stuck in the local mall with a man who may have sexually assaulted Alex, while another group of survivors, anchored by a priest and the traumatized Nathalie Raven (Frances Conroy), are trapped in a church.

Over the course of 10 episodes, the townspeople move from space to space, frequently turn on each other and attempt to come up with explanations for the murderous mist. One group fixates on a religious interpretation, while others try to understand the significance of a military presence in the town. The mist differentiates a bit from its cinematic counterpart; while that mist hides enormous beasts, this mist seems to contain various monstrous entities but also confuses people’s minds, encouraging them to attack each other.

The townspeople also dealt with personal issues, like discerning the true identity of the person who sexually assaulted Alex at a party, and whether Kevin was her biological father.

By the season’s end, the body count in Bridgeville was high, and a cliffhanger teasing a shocking reaction by the government tried to set up a season 2. However, after the final episode aired on August 10, 2017, the series was officially cancelled by Spike on September 27.

What did critics think about The Mist TV series?

Chris Reardon / ©Spike / courtesy Everett Collection

The Mist currently has a 59% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 46 reviews. In Entertainment Weekly, Nivea Serrao wrote of the pilot, “a lot of that drama is a little too on the nose, feeding into the stock characterization. But everything picks up when the Mist (my favorite character so far) shows up, allowing the series to unleash some of its more creative scares.” Rolling Stone rated it one of the 10 best shows to watch in June, but at RogerEbert.com, Brian Tallerico wrote that “there’s something not quite right about this premiere, including what feels like a misinterpretation of the source material and relatively low production values … the script is also remarkably thin, and I don’t see the characters getting more interesting as the show has to focus them entirely on survival now.”

Where can you watch The Mist TV series?

Currently, you won’t find the show streaming for free on any platforms, although you can purchase it from Apple TV, Amazon Prime, YouTube, and other streaming platforms.