Bad Influence! (1992-96)

Bad Influence! (1992-96)

4 Series | 57 episodes total, approx 20 minutes each.

Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital (2004)

Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital (2004)

aka Kingdom Hospital
Dir. Craig R. Baxley / 13 episodes, approx 40 mins each (01 and 13 are double length).

American horror author Stephen King took Danish film-maker Lars von Trier's eight episode miniseries, known originally as Riget (1994), and turned it into a thirteen episode English language series, relocated from Copenhagen to Lewiston, Maine (naturally).

There are probably many more changes, but I've not seen the original, so I can't say what they might be.

Von Trier shares an executive producer credit, suggesting he was agreeable to the adaptation, or at the very least happy to whore the concept out.

Peter Rickman (Jack Coleman), the person that we'd traditionally most readily identify as the main protagonist, is admitted to the titular hospital after a serious accident. An accident, incidentally, that mimics King's own hospitalisation almost verbatim; although I suspect the talking anteater is a fiction.

The King of Texas (2002)

The King of Texas (2002)

Dir. Uli Edel

Inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear (c.1603-06) but transposed to the US State and set in the year 1842. It's not entirely faithful to the play, and the language is modernised, but it'll be instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with the text.

Patrick Stewart leads the cast as John Lear, a cattle baron with 200,000 acres of land, an ornery disposition, and three daughters. When he makes the decision to divide his substantial holdings between them, he discovers their true character.

The acting is decent, considering it's a TV Movie, but Patrick's British accent is never far from the surface, which is distracting, given that he's supposed to be pure Texan, so much so that in the early parts of the movie it felt more like he was Captain Picard LARPing on the holodeck - a feeling that was compounded by the appearance of Colm Meaney (Miles O'Brien) portraying the Duke of Albany. If you're not a Star Trek TNG fan, you might find it easier to adjust than I did.

Planet of the Apes: Visionaries (2018)

Planet of the Apes: Visionaries (2018)

Author: Dana Gould (based on a screenplay by Rod Serling) | Illustrator: Chad Lewis | Page Count: 138

"It's a machine. The whole damn thing's a machine. Sophisticated and very ingenious... But always with the possibility of error."

A comic book based on Rod Serling's screenplay of the first Planet of the Apes movie, itself based on author Pierre Boulle's original La Planète des Singes (1963) novel, aka Monkey Planet. Serling's story was modified before being filmed, in part because it was a little too extravagant for the production team's budget, but much of what made it onscreen is present in the text, albeit occurring in a setting that's far removed from the pre-industrial one featured in the famous movie.

The main protagonist is US astronaut John Thomas, whose exploits take a similar path to that of Taylor in the movie, but his personality is very different.

What's most interesting about the book is the ape society, which is somewhat analogous to that of NY, circa 1950-60s. There are still social divisions between the three different ape types, but the hierarchy is less pronounced, so they work together a lot more closely than they did onscreen.