Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Stand’ On CBS All Access, A New Miniseries Based On Stephen King’s Pandemic-Related Epic Novel

Stephen King published his epic novel The Stand over 40 years ago, and there has already been a miniseries based on it, in 1994. Millions upon millions of people have either read the book or saw the miniseries. So we all have a good idea of what the plot of this new version will be: A flu pandemic (gulp!) nicknamed “Captain Trips” is unwittingly unleashed from a government bioweapons lab and it kills over 99% of the world’s population. Those who are somehow immune start to split into warring camps, one led by the mysterious Mother Abigail (Whoopi Goldberg) and the other led by the evil Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård).

THE STAND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We fly over a cornfield, when we hear the voice of an older woman going, “Bitter days lie ahead. Death and terror, betrayal and fear… you’ve all lived through them.”

The Gist: The first episode concentrates on three of the survivors, after showing one of them in a crew that finds bodies and buries them in massive graves. Five months prior to that, we see one of the crew members, Harold Lauder (Owen Teague) is riding his bike in his small town in Maine. He spies on his old babysitter, Frannie Goldsmith (Odessa Young), who is tending to her father, who is getting sick. He gets chased and falls when his bike hits a dead bird. He comes home to his sick sister.

A week later, everyone in the town except for Frannie and Owen are dead. Owen sees this as an opportunity to do something with his life, and he goes back to Frannie, who is burying her father in their backyard, to see if she can come with him to the CDC in Atlanta. She’s so despondent, though, that she ODs. He makes her vomit and saves her. In the meantime, an old lady comes to Frannie in a dream, telling her to meet her in Colorado.

After coming in contact with Charles Campion (Curtiss Cook Jr.), a sick man who crashed into a gas station in Texas, Stu Redman (James Marsden) is brought to a government research facility, where an epidemiologist, Dr. Ellis (Hamish Linklater), tells him about Captain Trips, and how he’s “an immune.” That facility is compromised when a nurse’s child gets the virus and they move to a secure facility in Vermont. But eventually, everyone there gets sick and dies, and Gen. Starkey (J.K. Simmons), the commander of the facility, allows Redman to escape just before he kills himself. Stu is getting visions, too, but what he sees in them are wolves.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The 1994 miniseries version of The Stand, but it’s also reminiscent of recent pandemic dramas reaching all the way back to The Walking Dead.

Our Take: Josh Boone (The Fault In Our Stars) and Benjamin Cavell (Justified) created this version of The Stand, and it does seem to be endorsed by King, given he wrote the final episode, which takes place after the novel’s ending. A novel this sprawling needs to have the length of a limited series to give all of its characters enough room to develop, which is why the 1994 version ended up being a miniseries, as well.

What does this version, 26 years later, lend to the story that the first one didn’t? For one, more time: 9 hours instead of 6. But the other is that Boone, Cavell and King aren’t restricted by broadcast network standards; people can curse and the victims of the plague can be a little more gross. But, what the 26 years have brought is an acknowledgement that a pandemic like this is within the realm of possibility (Captain Trips would make COVID look like the common cold), making it all the scarier.

Like the 1994 version, The Stand is stuffed with fine actors in roles big and small. We haven’t even seen Jovan Adepo as Larry Underwood or some of the other major characters. But what we’ve seen so far — Whoopi, Teague, Young, Mardsen — we like. The timeline shifting in this episode gives the viewers a chance to get some backstory on these characters instead of seeing the lead-up to the pandemic, which — let’s be honest — is a big relief to our pandemic-weary eyes.

But that doesn’t mean the presence of “Captain Trips” isn’t there, and that it doesn’t scare the crap out of us. But at the very least, Cavell and Boone have gotten to the good vs. evil meat of the story, which is what their intention was. If you’re a fan of the novel or the first miniseries, you may think that cutting that part out is sacrilege. We think: “Eh, we’ve seen enough pandemic stuff already.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: After Campion, who is more or less patient zero in this pandemic, grabs his family and drives away, he sees someone hitchhiking on the road (to the strains of Billy Joel’s “The Stranger” in the background). All of a sudden, the man is in the car, even though Campion never stopped.

Sleeper Star: Owen Teague is creepy as hell as Harold Lauder, who is completely in love with Frannie and is dismayed that, in the town the survivors have created, she’s pregnant and in a relationship with Stu. Oh. and Simmons’ brief appearance is a powerful moment; but Simmons could read his e-mails and generate a strong reaction.

Most Pilot-y Line: None, really.

Our Call: STREAM IT. This new version of The Stand is off to an intriguing start, whether you’re a fan of the book or not.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Stand On CBS All Access