MINISERIES PREMIERE: This new CBS All Access miniseries is a revisit of the classic Stephen King novel, with some new scenes, new approaches, and a new ending supplied by King himself. CBS All Access provided only the first four of nine episodes for preview, so I don’t know how this 2020 version of
The Stand ends… and wouldn’t spoil it by describing it if I knew. But I’m fine talking about the very beginning, which has a mysterious pandemic spreading over the U.S. and killing almost everyone, leaving a postapocalyptic mess of abandoned vehicles, unattended corpses, and evil opportunists. Josh Boone, a writer on
The New Mutants, is in charge here, and the standout stars of this new version include Alexander Skarsgård from
Big Little Lies and
True Blood and Heather Graham from
Boogie Nights and
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Also starring: Whoopi Goldberg, Amber Heard, and James Marsden. The episodes I’ve seen aren’t great – but in a pandemic, what else do you have going on? So why not watch a drama about a pandemic, which already was made into one TV miniseries in 1994? That one starred Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald, Jamey Sheridan, Laura San Giacomo, and Ruby Dee, along with Ray Walston, Rob Lowe and Matt Frewer. And
it was problematic…
For more info, see Mike Hughes' Open Mike.