The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A TV Mini-Series is a work made for television. Unlike a tv series, it tells a self-contained story that is spread across several episodes, ranging from two to more, although after around ten or so episodes it starts to blur into becoming a regular series. These episodes range from half-hour to one-hour or commonly two-hour timeslots.
The extended running time of such a format allows greater ease with storytelling than a regular feature film. It is often the favoured form for works adapted from books as the greater running time allows a more faithful treatment – a number of Stephen King works have found their best telling here. The Mini-Series has also worked well for disaster spectacles, biopics and retelling of historical and True Crime stories, and adaptations of popular classics.
Mini-series are often treated as a form of spectacle and given larger budgets than tv series in order to appeal to a wider audience. A mini-series can also serve as a pilot for a potential tv series.
A British children’s tv mini-series about a mysterious dinner service that presages the playing out of a Welsh myth, this is seen as one of the original influences on the Folk Horror genre
Fascinating work from Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the earliest depictions of Virtual Reality on screen and one that sets most of the genre’s tropes in place
The ‘true story’ bit is contentious but this tv mini-series was the first production to take the Frankenstein story back to the way Mary Shelley told it. Lavishly produced and with a fantastic cast
The most faithful version of Dracula to date. A BBC mini-series that adapts the book as a no-nonsense costume drama and even shoots in the mentioned locations, giving the impression of the story taking place as Bram Stoker visualised it
TV mini-series released as a theatrical film in some parts of the world that resurrects Captain Nemo in the present-day. It is Irwin Allen returning to his tv roots where Captain Nemo’s adventures become a blatant attempt to copy Star Wars
Dennis Potter was the greatest writer to ever work in televisio. This mini-series is one of his most celebrated works, featuring characters bursting out into lip-synched Golden Oldie songs, making biting contrast to their downbeaten lives
One of the best Stephen King adaptations made as a tv mini-series concerning a town overrun by vampires. Director Tobe Hooper excels himself, staging the book in terms a series of captivating set-pieces
The fourth and final of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass stores, which shows the professor as an old man in decaying future Britain trying to deal with an alien force manifest through ancient megaliths. A surprisingly bleak and cynical end to the saga but still with the greatness of Kneale’s writing
Ray Bradbury’s book about the human colonisation of Mars is an SF classic for its wistful, nostalgic poetry. This tv mini-series adaptation is killed by a lumbering director who over-explains Bradbury’s imagery in the most literal ways
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a multi-media phenomenon that has developed a cult. The tv series with a less-than-stellar BBC budget was not the most effective incarnation of these but still hits the wittily absurd nerve of Douglas Adams’ humour
Excellent and extremely faithful tv adaptation of the John Wyndham book. This tells the story in terms of ordinary people forced to survive in a harsh world overtaken by killer plants and contains some exceptional writing
TV mini-series remake of The Phantom of the Opera starring Jane Seymour that rewrites and rearranges much of the story to negligible effect
Very popular mini-series during its day (that was followed by a tv series) concerning the alien invasion and occupation of Earth, this has an utter banality that fails on almost every level – as human drama, science and even basic plausibility
Mini-series adaptation of a novel by John Wyndham, best known for The Day of the Triffids, concerning a young boy who develops an invisible alien companion. Imagine a version of Harvey retold by way of E.T.
Classic tv mini-series about rebellion in a future where Earth is controlled by giant alien tripod machines, this still holds up as something great today
A version of the H.G. Wells novel conducted as a mini-series of six half-hour episodes from the BBC. This is the most faithful adaptation of the book so far
Follow-up to the popular V mini-series, this is an absurd melodrama that is made up of incredibly bad science-fiction writing and directed with zero plausibility
The first sequel to Chocky, the classic mini-series about a boy with an alien invisible companion, this expands the concept out with the introduction of other children
One of the great tv series of the 1980s, a powerful and incisive snapshot of Thatcherite England, the backroom politics of the nuclear power industry and the environmentalist movement. A brilliantly written show featuring great performances
From Irwin Allen, the creator of Lost in Space etc, a tv version of Alice in Wonderland, conceived as an all-star musical that comes out as ponderous and leaden in Allen’s hands
An acclaimed mini-series about a frumpy woman taking gleeful revenge on the husband who abandoned her. Essentially Fatal Attraction rewritten with a feminist manifesto with hilariously barbed results
One of the most extraordinary works ever made for tv. From the pen of Dennis Potter, a mini-series that blends film noir, meta-fiction and autobiography
Modest and well-made British children’s tv mini-series about the mysterious psychic connection between two twins each unaware of the other’s existence
Mind-twisting mini-series where videogame designer Stephen Dillane is wound into a series of reality and illusion games
A standout tv mini-series that updates old mad scientist clichés into the era of Jane Goodall as scientist Charles Dance creates a human/gorilla hybrid child and tries to raise it as his own son
TV mini-series that came out hoping to ride the coattails of Star Trek: The Next Generation but looks dated barely ten years later. Somehow the idea of teenagers on a space mission didn’t get many audiences enthused
TV mini-series made for the 100th anniversary of the Jack the Ripper killings. While the show adheres more to the facts of the case of any filmed work up to that point and to have uncovered new evidence, it should be considered fiction
Before the films, this was an earlier BBC tv mini-series version of the C.S. Lewis book, one of a series of four adaptations. This is faithful to the story but suffers from impoverished effects
Mini-series that was a popular hit in its day, which largely steals its premise of a human and alien cop hunting a body-hopping alien from The Hidden. What makes the show work past its rather ordinary story, is the two leads and their wittily sparring Lethal Weapon-type relationship
The second of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, the slightest of the works where the story is reduced to two half-hour episode
This was the third of the four BBC tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. The tv versions treats the books with quite reasonable faithfulness but suffer from extremely cheap looking effects
The last gasp of the mid-80s era of nuclear anxieties that brought Threads and The Day After, a tv mini-series about the imposition of martial law in a British city as US-Soviet nuclear war looms in Europe
There was undeniable shock value watching 1960s sex symbol Diana Rigg cast as a venomous middle-aged woman with murder on her mind. While this BBC mini-series won awards, you feel that a 1960s Hammer psycho-thriller would have conducted it in half the time
A tv mini-series where Lindsay Wagner has a near-death experience and is then haunted by people come back from the dead to kill her. From the author of The Howling
TV mini-series from the great Dennis Potter in which the lead character in a smutty novel by an aging writer rebels against her fate. As always with Potter, this blurs fiction, meta-fiction and autobiographical elements
Stephen King adapted mini-series and one of the best. A dark Coming of Age tale, Tim Curry makes an unsettling Pennywise (in doing so popularised the figure of the killer clown)
Lush tv mini-series with Charles Dance as the Phantom, this stands too much in the shadow of the then recent Lloyd Webber musical and its making The Phantom into a romantic figure as opposed to a horror icon
This was the fourth and final, as well as the best of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, which works well enough despite the impoverished production values
Adapted from a Kingsley Amis novel, this BBC mini-series is a ghost story for arts audiences. Albert Finney is great as a philandering hotelier who must deal with the appearances of an 18th Century sorcerer
A modestly made BBC mini-series concerning a boy who discovers he has the titular gift of clairvoyant visions and how those around him try to exploit this
One of the earliest works about Alien Abduction, predating the fascination with the topic that came not long after with tv’s The X Files. From genre regular Dan Curtis, the creator of tv’s Dark Shadows
Absolutely delightful and charming BBC series about a family of miniature people who live in secrecy inside the walls of human houses. The best of several versions of the popular books
The Stand is regarded as Stephen King’s best novel, an epic that depicts the final showdown between good and evil in the aftermath of civilisation. The mini-series adaptation was alas placed into the ham fists of one of King’s worst adapters. Mick Garris
Danish tv mini-series co-directed by Lars von Trier set in a haunted hospital. This comes with a blacker-than-black sense of humour in its interwoven character strands plus moments that are genuinely eerie
Follow-up to Lars von Trier’s haunted hospital mini-series The Kingdom. The story is continued, although the plot seems rickety and either drops elements or veers off on other tangents as though it is being made up as people go along
Stephen King expressed dissatisfaction with the way Stanley Kubrick handled his novel and here remakes it as a tv mini-series that adheres more closely to the book. While Kubrick’s film is far better, this is not bad where even the perpetually awful Mick Garris subdues his tendency to overdo everything towards some subtlety
A British mini-series that offers an ingenious modernised reconeptualisation of the vampire genre, depicting the activities of a secret agency of vampire hunters
Hallmark TV mini-series version of the Jules Verne novel that keeps faith to the book for the most part before heading off on some colourfully exotic adventures
A fairly reasonable tv mini-series adaptation of Lewis Carroll – a version that excels in terms of design and in using The Jim Henson Workshop to bring the Wonderland creatures to life
Lively and undeniably likeable Hallmark mini-series that celebrates Irish myth. Giddily silly nonsense conducted with a boisterous energy
A British tv mini-series where a group of people in a regular train carriage go into suspended animation and emerge fifty years later to find a devastated world
One of the best Stephen King tv mini-series with Colm Feore as a mysterious stranger who manipulates and turns an entire town against themselves
Hallmark tv mini-series adaptation of the classic tales has been granted a decent budget that allows the stories to emerge with lavish spectacle and the fantasy to fly with exceptional regard
Takashi Miike tv mini-series with a mind-bogglingly confusing plot involving a split personalitied detective, possession, a terrorist pop star and barcodes imprinted in eyeballs
Dean R. Koontz adapted mini-series about plane crash survivors and psychic powers that comes with a series of wild twists that the script fails to offer adequate explanation for
Hallmark mini-series set in a world 200 years after the classic fairytales have occurred, this wittily deflates or contrasts classic story elements with the present-day
I enjoyed Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books far more than J.R.R. Tolkien. Alas, the sublime texture and eccentricity is completely missing in this BBC tv version, which aims for colourful silliness
TV mini-series remake of the 1959 nuclear war film. With no longer the need to make messages as in the original, the story has been expanded out with a lush romantic sweep
A Hallmark tv mini-series remake of the Greek myths that fails to stand up to the classic 1963 version. Here Ray Harryhausen’s amazing stop-motion animated effects are replaced by cut-price CGI
This TV mini-series remake of the Frank Herbert novel is much more faithful to the essence and complexity of the book, even if it lacks the visual resplendence of the film versions
TV mini-series that purports to tell a biography of fairytale author Hans Christian Andersen only to freely rearrange or outrighly invents aspects of Andersen’s life
TV mini-series that adapts six less well known short stories by H.G. Wells into an anthology with Wells as the central character. A couple of good stories, some that never hit the mark
A TV mini-series adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle lost world story, this has been produced by the BBC as a glorious period adventure with CGI dinosaurs
TV mini-series co-produced by Hallmark Entertainment and The Jim Henson Company that offers an intriguing deconstruction of the fairytale that reverses the traditional sympathies
A strong and worthwhile serial killer thriller mini-series from the BBC with a killer targeting victims with the names and professions of the apostles
A tv mini-series adaptation of the famous Chinese legend Journey to the West made for US audiences by Hallmark Entertainment. The story remains stolidly earthbound and the meta-fictional contortions the story has to add to engage in to have the monk hero replaced by a contemporary Thomas Gibson are bizarre
TV mini-series based on Marion Zimmer Bradley’s book that offers a revisionist take on the Arthurian legends, telling the story through the eyes of the women of the saga
TV mini-series sequel to Stephen King’s Firestarter that now sees Charlie McGee in her twenties played by Marguerite Moreau. The story feels under-plotted and over-padded
TV mini-series remake of the Stephen King novel, which restores many aspects of the book not in the 1976 film. Unfortunately, Brian De Palma has been replaced by a tv director who regards it as just another assignment
Amiably good natured if unchallenging comedy where Dawn French engages in a relationship with an alien visitor
A Hallmark tv mini-series based on the life of the supposed true-life medium James Van Praagh
A TV mini-series based on the popular illustrated books by James Gurney about the discovery of a lost land where dinosaurs have evolved into their own civilisation
The Hallmark tv mini-series version of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale is lushly produced but tends to plod when it should come to life as fantasy
TV mini-series in ten two-hour parts that deals with UFOs, covering several generations from the 1940s to the present. An interesting take on UFO encounters with the benefit of some phenomenal performances
A Stephen King scripted tv mini-series about the investigation into a haunted house. This is not quite a classic in the vein of its model The Haunting but is a solid and effective entry
Follow-up to the 2000 tv mini-series adaptation of Dune, this adapts Frank Herbert’s two books sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. The production lacks the depth of its predecessor
Stunning tv mini-series adaptation of Tony Kushner’s award-winning play about the impact of the AIDS crisis on gay culture in the 1980s, which becomes a surreal fantasy filled with appearances of angels and ghosts
Mini-series that reconstructs the old Battlestar Galactica into smart and intelligent SF with strong characters, a gritty realism and sensational effects. A tv series followed and became one of the best SF shows of the 2000s
Beautifully made and written Hallmark tv mini-series directed by Steve Barron that brings to life a variety of different Native American myths and legends
BBC mini-series adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ classic children’s book about a secret underworld of bogeys who love all that is filthy and disgusting and their encounter with a human family
A Hallmark TV mini-series version of the classic H. Rider haggard adventure novel that suffers from a non-acting Patrick Swayze badly miscast as Allan Quatermain
Disaster mini-series based around the great belief that a super-earthquake will come and pitch most of California into the ocean. Despite devoting some four hour of screen time to it, the drama feels painfully padded at times, while the special effects sequences come out as not very special
TV mini-series remake of the Stephen King novel, this fails to hold a candle to the earlier 1979 version
Mini-series with the intriguing premise of Timothy Hutton receiving a briefcase from the future with clues that foretells his death in five days time. This befalls utterly predictable handling and is padded out to fill a five-hour slot
TV mini-series that tries to conduct a rigorously faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s book and largely succeeds apart from some minor changes. On the other hand, none of the period setting or story much comes to life
A disaster tv mini-series about the most powerful storm in recorded history descending on Chicago just as a hacker disables the power grid. Most of this plays by the cliches of the genre.
This TV mini-series adaptation of the Ursula Le Guin books is an insult. This was quickly mounted on the back of the success of The Lord of the Rings films but feels like tv filler that has zero affinity for Le Guin’s richly cultured world
Forensic thriller in which Tom Conti is a CSI who discovers evidence that he might have conducted a series of killings while in a fugue state
Sequel to the tv mini-series Category 6: Day of Destruction ups the scale of the super-storm but is also better constructed as a disaster movie
Disaster TV mini-series about the end of the world due to the sun about to go supernova. Cliche plotting, canned action scenes and bad science ensue
An impressive line-up of genre names came together for this big event mini-series that sets out to offer a conclusive explanation for the Bermuda Triangle in a plot that juggles an entertaining stew of wild ideas involving timewarps, alternate timelines and government cover-ups
Hallmark tv mini-series adaptation of Jules Verne’s desert island drama featuring no less than Patrick Stewart as Captain Nemo. This sinks badly amid incredibly shoddy giant animal digital effects
Creepy UK tv mini-series with David Tennant as a psycho boyfriend obsessed with Kate Ashfield
What approach can this Hallmark mini-series take that hasn’t been exhausted by the numerous other Hercules films? Answer: Simply tell the Greek myth as it was written. At which it does not too badly
Tightly wound British tv thriller where Jemma Redgrave has a big secret that her ex is a jailed serial killer and she now cannot be certain if her son or fiance is responsible for a murder
Strong and effective UK tv thriller where Stephen Tompkinson becomes obsessed with the girlfriend who went missing years earlier after he thinks he sees her again
British tv mini-series reminiscent of And Soon the Darkness about an English couple who have their children abducted by sinister strangers while holidaying in France. From the director of Ginger Snaps
Sequel to Hallmark’s earlier tv mini-series Merlin featuring a return performance from Sam Neill in the title role, this is otherwise a generic and unmemorable work of Arthurian fantasy
One of the most conceptually ingenious tv mini-series ever created concerning a quest for objects from a mysterious hotel room that have been imbued with amazing powers.
TV mini-series that adapts eight Stephen King short stories. As with any anthology, the stories vary in quality but are generally quite reasonable