La storia di Lisey

Very nice cast.

More than a little frightening. The overtly dark characters come off as one-note... the potential for subtlety is lost. I know how brilliant King is, and I realize that it was important for him to write the televised script... but I'm not sure if he had a say in the actors' interpretations.

On the whole, this feels like it will be unnecessarily drawn out--this is my prediction, after 1 episode. If it was a movie, I would have watched all of it.

"Awww, give it a chance", you say.

I gave it a chance. I've had enough.

Exactly like the book. Same drawn out story where you turn the page and realize you were accidentally mentally constructing your grocery list and have to turn back and reread a page or two.

I really wanted to like the book. I really wanted to like this series. But this book/series taught me that an author can get so big, so famous, that anything he puts out is treated with respect. Even when it doesn't deserve it.

The acting, the mood, the music, the locations are all quality. But the story is not.

Well-acted and very pretty to look at. After the watching the first episode I'm definitely curious to see where the story is going, however, constantly jumping between different times and visions can be a little confusing.

Watched both episodes available now and I will say it's weird. I like weird and it's definitely weird! If you don't kind of pay attention you might start to get a little lost. Lisey or Lisa, which is her real first name, starts sifting through her memories of her late husband as she finds clues he left behind that he wanted her to find after his death....this is not a spoiler as it's in the preview that he died. She has memories of these weird things but does not seem quite fazed by them. At the same time, her older sister has some issues that connect her to Lisey's husband. Another side story involves someone trying to get her late husband's unpublished manuscripts. So there is a lot going on. It's not necessarily confusing if you pay attention. After the second episode and I can already see how some things are connected, but some people may just be super confused and rate this very low. I won't rate it low yet because it kept my attention and had some intriguing aspects. So I am interested in how this weird, sometimes off the wall, story unfolds.

It is absurd for hundreds of people to give this show extremely low ratings accompanied by statements like "What am I watching??" Well, pay attention, use your imagination, and watch the entire series instead of giving it a three-star review after two episodes.

The miniseries is an improvement over the novel, which I think is one of King's weakest, despite the fact that he says it is his favorite of his books. The book is relentlessly dark and depressing, with literally no humor, with a needlessly oblique and depressing ending. The miniseries, on the other hand, while being equally bleak and depressing for the vast majority, does actually come to a conclusion in a way that the novel did not. It is sad and beautiful, bittersweet, a deeply emotional homage to romantic love, loyalty, and loss. I did not make up my mind about the miniseries until the last 15 minutes of the final episode, it which point it achieved what the novel didn't.

As for reviewers criticizing it for being "all style and no substance," they are either missing the point behind the production design or they haven't lived enough life to understand and appreciate and feel the thematic emotional substance of the story.

With respect to production design, the characters literally traveling into a fantastical alternate realm of reality. Criticizing Lisey's Story for flamboyant visual style it's like criticizing Sleeping Beauty or Peter Pan for the same reason. It's just an absurd statement and which makes it clear that that viewer really doesn't understand how to watch fantasy movies or shows, which has to make you wonder why they are watching this to begin with since it's obvious from the description that that's what it is. As for the idea of lacking substance, I've already remarked on that.

I'm not saying the story or the program are not without their flaws. The novel and the miniseries would have benefited from making Scott's character more multi-faceted and less dower. I also did not appreciate the way Lisey is physically brutalized and repeatedly called the b-word. I found this difficult to take in both versions of the story, and I'm still not sure it was necessary. We get the point well before the end of each scene in question and I have to wonder why King, who wrote the script, and the showrunner both thought these moments needed to be dwelled upon. And, as I mentioned before, the 5-Hour run time would have benefited from at least a few moments of character-developing humor, but there is almost none.

At the end of the day I think this is one of the better adaptations of a King novel, and the only one I can think of that actually improves upon the source material. I recommend it for thoughtful, imaginative viewers of fantasy, and people who have the ability to feel deep emotions and empathy for the characters being portrayed. You have to be able to experience this show on an emotional level in order to get what King is trying to achieve.