Stephen King: Every Nightmares & Dreamscapes Episode Ranked, Worst to Best

Stephen King’s short stories were once adapted into a TNT anthology series called Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and here’s how the episodes stack up. While there have been quite a few TV show adaptations of King’s work, it’s surprisingly rare how many are part of anthology shows. After all, King has written a veritable mountain of short stories during his career, many of which scream out for an adaptation befitting of their brief length. Too often King’s shorts have been stretched into a feature length film, and that rarely works out.

The fact that there’s only ever been one anthology show created to adapt King’s work exclusively is another surprise, as again, he has enough worthwhile short stories to power a decade’s worth of 13-episode seasons, and that’s being conservative. King himself is also a likeable, interesting speaker and general personality, and would make an excellent host for such a show if he saw fit to do it, perhaps explaining the story’s inspiration after it had concluded.  Yet despite Hollywood’s renewed willingness to snap up any King project they can, a new King anthology still hasn’t been greenlit.

For now, King fans only have Nightmares & Dreamscapes to watch, which aired on TNT in the summer of 2006. Eight episodes were produced, and despite ratings that ranged from good to impressive, a second season was never picked up. Early death aside, here’s a look at how those eight episodes compare.

8. Crouch End

A young married couple, played by Claire Forlani and Eion Bailey, are in London for both their honeymoon and eventually to take care of some work matters for the husband. The pair heads to the small town of Crouch End, which has a nasty reputation, and turns out to be a gateway between the normal world and a dimension of Lovecraftian beasts. The short story it’s based on is effective, but Crouch End‘s screenplay is weak, leading to a very rushed feeling. The CGI effects included throughout the episode, especially near the end, are atrocious as well. Crouch End isn’t hard to sit through, but it’s easily the weakest entry in Nightmares & Dreamscapes.

7. Umney’s Last Case

Umney’s Last Case is a more satisfying watch then Crouch End by a good margin, but this tale of a writer so sick of his life that he seeks to inhabit the fictional world he’s created suffers from a common King criticism: the ending is really bad. Just when it feels like the story is building to a real final conflict between William H. Macy’s dueling characters, it just… ends, with nothing resolved. Sadly, that’s entirely accurate to the original story.

6. The Fifth Quarter

The Fifth Quarter showcases the alternate side of Stephen King, where the supernatural and macabre goes out the window, and gritty real-life circumstances come into play. Jeremy Sisto stars as Willie, an ex-con who’s tipped off to a huge score by a close friend, right before that person dies. Willie now needs to recover a map from dangerous men that will lead to riches. The acting in this episode is top-notch, especially from Sisto and Samantha Mathis, who plays his wife. The story is compelling, but the ending unsatisfying, and a major departure from King’s prose.

5. You Know They Got a Hell of a Band

You Know They Got a Hell of a Band may well have the most creative premise of the entire Nightmares and Dreamscapes series. The story sees a couple traveling through Oregon, played by Steven Weber and Kim Delaney, who make a wrong turn and end up in a town literally called Rock and Roll Heaven. Inside are lots of deceased music legends, which sounds fun, until they get creepy and won’t let outsiders leave. It’s a fun episode, but like Umney’s Last Case, the ending falls flat, and it’s straight from the page. This is one story that could actually support a movie version, if only to finally explain what exactly the town is. Is it hell? Purgatory? Clearly it’s not a happy place.

4. The Road Virus Heads North

A fairly simple, but quite effective story, The Road Virus Heads North begins the cream of the Nightmares and Dreamscapes crop. Tom Berenger stars as horror writer Richard Kinnell, who stops at a yard sale on the way back from a trip out of town, and happens upon a rather ghastly painting by a now dead artist. Kinnell buys it, but the painting soon develops a life of its own. Full of genuinely creepy moments and a moody atmosphere, The Road Virus Heads North is a great watch, and even manages to craft a good ending.

3. Autopsy Room Four

Starring Richard Thomas, who played Bill Denborough in the 1990 IT miniseries, Autopsy Room Four is a deft mix of horror and dark humor, with another satisfying ending. Thomas plays Howard Cottrell, a corporate hotshot who wakes up in a place no living person wants to be: the autopsy room, on the slab. Unable to move or speak, Howard must find a way to clue the doctors in before they begin cutting him up. Being awake but unresponsive in the face of surgery is a common fear, and this episode plays it to the hilt, but with a twist. It’s alternately suspenseful and funny, and the ending is a laugh out loud moment.

2. The End of the Whole Mess

The End of the Whole Mess is definitely the most dour story of Nightmares & Dreamscapes, but it’s also close to being the best. Told in the past tense, it’s clear something absolutely awful is going to happen, and spends much of the episode setting that awful thing up. Ron Livingston and Henry Thomas star, and Thomas especially shines in his role of unwitting cause of the apocalypse. The ending is dramatically fulfilling, but wow is it emotionally rough. Those in a bad mood should probably steer clear.

1. Battleground

Battleground was the first Nightmares and Dreamscapes episode to air, and TNT sure picked a winner to kick things off. William Hurt stars as an assassin who, after murdering a toy maker, gets menaced at his home by a squad of sentient army men. The entire episode is free of dialogue, letting the visuals of the battle between Hurt and the toys tell the story. Unlike Crouch End, the CGI here is quite good overall, and Hurt makes for a terrific combination of protagonist and antagonist.

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