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.
Darryl Hannah is the queen of a species of body-snatching insects intent on invading Earth. This is a clear winner head and shoulders above any other contenders for the most ridiculous alien invasion work ever made.
Modestly effective tv mini-series about the crew of a British submarine in the 1980s being taken over by the ghosts from a World War II submarine
TV mini-series that turns the discovery of Tutankamun’s tomb into an Indiana Jones adventure. But everything is played with a constant barrage of one-liners and action sequences so silly you can’t take any of the show seriously
Quite good British tv mini-series psycho-thriller in which calculating Hermione Norris sneaks her way in and takes over the home of Julie Graham stealing her husband and gaslighting her
Halfway reasonable Stephen King adapted tv mini-series. This has been placed in the directorial hands of King’s worst adapter Mick Garris who at least holds his worst tendencies in check
True Crime mini-series based on the infamous Moors Murders of the 1960s and one that seems determined to conduct the least interesting account of the murders possible
The first in a series of Terry Pratchett Discworld adaptations for tv. This makes the odd choice of adapting one of the more complex and darker of Pratchett’s usually comic books but it works fairly well overall
Nick Willing conducts the first of his SF revampings of popular tales. Here The Wizard of Oz is reworked into a Steampunk fantasy with some startling reinterpetations of the familiar characters
A British disaster tv mini-series that depicts London being overwhelmed by vast flooding and the struggle by civil authorities to cope
Doctor Who writer/producer Steven Moffat’s modernised Jekyll and Hyde reworks the story in fascinatingly radical ways, while James Nesbitt gives a gleeful rafter-rattling performance
A great tv mini-series where modern girl Jemima Rooper is transported back into Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice but disrupts the story with her modern ways
TV series remake of Michael Crichton’s novel about the attempts to contain a viral outbreak from space. Crichton’s story was a straightforward work, whereas the mini-series has been absurdly overburdened with other plots
The second live-action tv adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books (in fact combining two books). This is uneven and oddly padded but beautifully produced
A mini-series based on the classic comic-book masked hero but the attempts to modernise The Phantom for the post-Dark Knight era seem bizarrely awkward
Depending on how you saw this, this is either a UK tv mini-series or three separately released films. Taking place over a decade, the three stories have a common locale and overlapping characters in the story of the hunt for a serial killer and the battle against a corrupt police department in Yorkshire
Fascinating British mini-series about a series of modern-day Jack the Ripper copycat killings, one where the writers have clearly done their research
Following on from his reworking of The Wizard of Oz in Tin Man, this is a tv mini-series where Nick Willing rather fascinatingly reinterprets Alice in Wonderland in SF terms
Disappointing tv mini-series remake of the John Wyndham novel about England overrun by killer plants. This abandons most of the book’s sociological portrait for cliche melodramatics
Disaster TV mini-series where assorted well-known faces fight through the chaos to prevent an impending meteor strike
The second tv mini-series of Philip Jose Farmer’s classic SF novels trashes the books just as badly as the first attempt. The premise and characters are indifferently rewritten, while the show is churned out by a director with a tatty indifference to what he is making
A disappointing tv mini-series adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel, which has been (largely) played as a straight adventure with the usual Pratchett comedy taking a backseat
TV mini-series about British serial killing husband and wife duo Fred and Rosemary West. While not uninteresting, this merely depicts the aftermath of Fred’s arrest and the relationship with a volunteer helper
German mini-series about the hunt for an escaped killer that consists of three films, each telling the stories of different characters that weave into the main narrative
Sequel/modernisation (it is confusing what) to The Wizard of Oz relocated in New York. This tv mini-series may be the cheapest work ever served up bearing the Oz name and flounders amid the shabbiness of its effects and utter lack of magic its director conjures
Following Tin Man and Alice, another of Nick Willing’s ingenious rewritings and rationalisations of classic children’s tales in science-fiction terms. Here the essentials of Peter Pan are transported to another planet
The perpetually terrible Mick Garris is allowed loose on another Stephen King book where he promptly reduces a subtle, ambiguous ghost story to a series of lunging pop-up scares without any concept of atmosphere or nuance
An underrated mini-series – sort of the anti-Supernatural. This creates a highly original afterlife mythology and some great characters arcs, while overspilling with wry nerdish in-humour
Ghost story BBC mini-series adapted from a novel by horror writer James Herbert that unfolds between two different eras. With an amazing cast of Before They Were Famous names.
Christopher Smith is an underrated genre director but his first venture into tv is disappointing cross-historical quest for the Holy Grail story that reads like warmed over Da Vinci Code
TV mini-series remake of the Michael Crichton medical thriller that pointlessly changes and over-extrudes a tight and effective original, while director Mikael Salomon adds absurd red herrings and keys away major surprises well in advance
British tv mini-series ghost story that takes place across three different eras – in 1944, 1975 and 2012. More of a mystery than a scare show but drawn with a beautifully wistful feel for place and time
The return of the talented Steve Barron after a decade’s absence in a film that was shot in my own backyard (literally). Disappointingly, all we get is a work that unimaginatively rehashes cliches about amok A.I.s
An impoverished sf disaster mini-series about a dark matter experiment going amok that manages to tediously drag out four hours of soap opera dramatics and control room doubletalk
Fascinating tv mini-series set around the notion of a generation ship – the show explores the scenario in interesting ways then proceeds to put some wild spins on what we think is happening
TV mini-series biopic of James Bond creator Ian Fleming that substantially embellishes details of Fleming’s biography to create its own story. Dominic Cooper is absurdly miscast as Fleming, playing the part with a boyish smirk
Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby was a classic film that popularised the modern interest in occult and deviltry on film; this sad remake is something that only parrots the cliches that have set in in the ensuing 46 years and clumsily mishandles all of Polanski’s comically edgy paranoia
Lush, beautifully produced version of the Agatha Christie murder mystery from the BBC to celebrate Christie’s 125th anniversary. The story is a chamber mystery with guests in an isolated house being bumped off – sort of Big Brother with dead bodies
Arthur C. Clarke’s book is one of the all-time SF classics; this mini-series adaptation counts as one of the biggest book-to-film abortions in the SF genre handled by people who know nothing about SF
Second tv version of the Raymond Briggs book about a secret society of bogeys who love all that is filthy and disgusting, This cheats when it comes to the bogeys but goes all out on the disgustingness of their lifestyle
Very impressive British mini-series about a woman exorcist. This dispenses with the usual head-turning, barf-bag theatrics and feels like the first theologically thought out work of its type, one that largely eschews horror effect to come together as a superbly well-written story
The Enfield Haunting is a supposedly true-life haunting that most audiences are familiar with from The Conjuring 2; this is an earlier tv mini-series treatment that offers a more realistically grounded telling
This BBC adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s book about rival 19th century magicians kicks J.K. Rowling completely out of the ring. A beautifully staged costume drama, written with a superb Austen-esque dryness of wit
BBC mini-series based on true-life serial killer John Reginald Christie that was earlier filmed as the classic >i>10 Rillington Place. Tim Roth steps into the role and the show adopts an exacting feel for the period to portray Christie’s crimes with considerable effect
One of the best and most original ghost stories in some time, a mini-series for the BBC set in the 1890s, this does remarkable things in entirely turning the genre on its head
Stephen King adapted mini-series in which James Franco finds a mysterious door that leads back to 1960 and sets out to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy
Mini-series made for the BBC that seems to have closely studied the late 80s/90s psycho-thriller – Fatal Attraction, Single White Female. Morven Christie is a pregnant mother who takes a leave of absence from work only to discover that her replacement appears to be plotting to kill her
The alternate history has never fared well on film but this British mini-series is an excellent variant on the Nazis Win World War II scenario. As opposed to the similar but tedious The Man in the High Castle series, this is marvellously understated and written with superb tension
BBC tv mini-series remake of the classic Richard Adams novel about talking rabbits on a quest. To get it over with, the animation is not the high-end quality that we have been spoiled with by Pixar et al. On the other hand, what remains is an excellent faithfully told version of the story
The first of China Mieville’s works to be adapted to the screen, a detective story set in two cities that exist in the same geographic space but where each act as their own country. This misses as much as it succeeds
The Picnic at Hanging Rock with its hauntingly unsolved mystery is considered one of the greatest Australian films of all time; this mini-series in six one-hour parts drags every beat of the story out and pads the slim original with so many other character mini-dramas and backstories that the mystery is drowned out
This BBC tv mini-series starts out seeming a mystery about the disappearance of a child as the investigating heroine makes the jolt realisation that she is the missing child, before the show edges over into occult conspiracy. Very nicely written and beautifully directed with a line-up of standout performances
BBC mini-series that sets out to restore the H.G. Wells novel to the era it was written. This it does, as well as restores many aspects that other films change. At the same time, it also introduces some radical changes that make it the most variant of the adaptations to date
A tv mini-series that offers a dark, adult and definitely not family friendly version of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens tale that reinvents the original in quite astonishing ways
Exceptionally written UK mini-series from Doctor Who producer Russell T. Davies following a diverse family throughout the 2020s that become a projection of current trends turned nightmarish
TV mini-series based on the Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett novel that spoofs The Omen and Biblical End Times prophecies. The series is very close to the book as though it didn’t want to edit any precious gag
BBC mini-series retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that deconstructs and widely expands on sections of the book to create something relentlessly modernistic, sometimes in ways that take you aback
You might be inclined to dismiss on the basis of its title as some of lunatic fringe YouTube conspiracy video. But what we actually have is a strong and powerfully written alternate history mini-series based around the idea of Charles Lindbergh becoming US President in 1940 and the country’s subsequent slide into fascism
BBC mini-series about two lovers on a killing spree that works through some great performance and engaging character arcs
Mini-series based on the works of Terry Pratchett that feels as though it is made, designed and cast by people who haven’t even read the books
Bollywood conducts a reasonable attempt to make its own equivalent of the zombie film in this mini-series about people at siege from undead British colonial soldiers awakened
A UK TV mini-series that borrow much from The Wicker Man in a complex and fascinating story about the discovery of folk religion on a small island and becoming caught up in pending rituals
Mike Flanagan follows up the hit of The Haunting of Hill House with a mini-series that adapts another classic work The Turn of the Screw out into a similar kind of cross-generational ghost story. The results are extraordinary
TV mini-series adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian novel. Developed by Grant Morrison, this freely adapts the novel but does a strong and intelligent job of reimagining it in contemporary terms
The Stand is in my opinion Stephen King’s greatest book. The question is whether this new mini-series version will improve on the laughably failed 1994 version
Alex Garland directed-written tv mini-series that grasps at big ideas about the meaning of it all concerning a computer that can track every particle and predict past and future. This emerges as one of the finest SF work of the last few years
Excellent British tv mini-series that tells the story of true-life serial killer Dennis Nilsen who preyed on gay men in London in the 1980s. David Tennant gives an electrifying performance in the title role
Stephen King writes the script for a TV mini-series adaptation of what he considers to be his best book about a widow who discovers a secret parallel world
South Korean tv mini-series about the investigation of a moonbase with illicit experiments and something possibly alien unleashed
Mike Flanagan returns with his best work to date. Effectively a Catholic version of Salem’s Lot, this comes with some flat out great pieces of writing
Compulsively watchable Ryan Murphy mini-series about a family whose life is torn apart by a sinister letter-writing campaign. A true story that gets far most bizarre than most fiction
The third screen adaptation of John Wyndham’s book, previously filmed as Village of the Damned, this gives the story an update in some interesting ways
Mike Flanagan horror mini-series adapted from Christopher Pike’s book, this is set around a group of patients in a hospice who form a group to tell each other horror stories
Lars von Trier returns to finish off his haunted hospital saga The Kingdom after a 25 years absence, despite the death of several principals, and again milks the same darkly hilarious vein
Best TV of the year. A mini-series that offers an absolutely compulsive dive into the disturbing mind of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and an exactingly detailed charting of his crimes. Evan Peters shines in the title role
Mike Flanagan mini-series that expands on the story to incorporate a host of other Poe stories. More like another of Mike Flanagan’s cross-generational ghost stories by way of tv’s Succession with a lot of Poe-esque margin notes
A smart, intelligent tv mini-series that conducts a murder mystery that ranges between the 1890s and 2050s, before arriving at an ingenious and clever SF explanation
Brit Marling is one of the most intelligent creative faces of the 2010s/20s. Here she co-writes, co-directs and stars in a fascinating murder mystery set in the tech world at a futuristic retreat
An exhaustive and very accurately detailed tv mini-series based around the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who targeted prostitutes in the north of England between 1975 and 1981
Earth Abides is a classic novel that essentially defined the theme of survival in the aftermath of the collapse of civilisation. This is a TV mini-series adaptation of the book but badly fumbles it
An eight-episode tv mini-series based on true-life necrophile/grave robber Ed Gein. This expands the story out and considerably embellishes the facts but is one of the most outrageously out there pieces of tv watching you will ever come across
A tv mini-series remake of William Golding’s classic novel about schoolboys stranded on a desert island and their descent into barbarism. This gets the essence of the book with a raw primality that makes for exciting viewing
A beautifully-made post-apocalyptic story told as a mandala of threads and surprise connections that stretch over twenty years