Mr. Mercedes, a crime thriller based on Stephen King's novel, successfully blended the tone of Mindhunter and The Silence of the Lambs while avoiding the supernatural horror genre that King is mostly known for. The show focused on a beleaguered aging detective's attempts to track down a killer by getting to grips with their thinking.
One Stephen King show managed to mix Mindhunter with The Silence of the Lambs, and the series was a success precisely because it avoided the genre that King is mostly known for.
Since the beginning of his career, Stephen King has primarily been known as a horror writer. This is why some of his trippier adaptations, like CBS’s small-town sci-fi mystery Under the Dome, can leave viewers who expected a straightforward horror story confounded.
However, one of the author’s best adaptations in the last decade was closer in tone to Mindhunter or The Silence of the Lambs than King’s classic supernatural horrors like Carrie or The Shining. Based on the nonfiction book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit, executive producer David Fincher's Mindhunter followed Holt McCallany's Bill Tench and Jonathan Groff's Holden Ford as the two FBI agents set up the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit.
This 70s period piece saw the duo's interview notorious serial killers as they attempted to understand the twisted psychology behind their crimes. Similarly, director Jonathan Demme's classic psychological thriller The Silence of the Lambs introduced viewers to both the cannibal genius Hannibal Lecter and Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling, another FBI agent who worked hard to get inside the mind of a killer.
In much the same way, the King adaptation Mr. Mercedes focused on a beleaguered aging detective's attempts to track down a killer by getting to grips with their thinking. Mr. Mercedes was a rare crime thriller from Stephen King while this sounds like a compelling crime thriller in the vein of Mindhunter or True Detective, viewers familiar with King's oeuvre may have been waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Since almost all of King's most famous novels and short stories are supernatural horrors, it was reasonable to assume that the real villain of Mr. Mercedes would eventually be revealed to be a vampire, a ghoul, a demon, or some sort of other paranormal entity. However, in an intriguing subversion of expectations, this didn't turn out to be the case.
The big twist in Mr. Mercedes is that there is no twist, or rather, that the show never leaves the grounded world of psychological thrillers to enter the full-blown supernatural horror of King's best-known works. Viewers who expected Mr. Mercedes to take a turn into the Evil Dead franchise's demonic horror would be left disappointed, but everyone else was treated to a truly superb crime thriller from a master of the genre.
The unofficial Mr. Mercedes follow-up brought back Stephen King's usual genre. King might not be best known for his crime thrillers, but Mr. Mercedes is just as unsettling, ingenious, and compelling as Mindhunter, Silence of the Lambs, or even the three-season masterpiece Hannibal. The show benefited from two superb central turns from Brendan Gleeson as Bill Hodges and Succession's Justine Jupe as his trusty assistant, Holly Gibney, although losing these stars didn't hold back its equally acclaimed follow-up.
After the successful run of Mr. Mercedes, a recast version of Holly Gibney starred in the show's unofficial follow-up, HBO's 2020 King adaptation The Outsider. Although this starry thriller starts out like Mr. Mercedes, setting up a dark and compelling courtroom drama/murder mystery, the series eventually reveals itself to be something more in line with King's traditional horror novels like It. Subscribe to the newsletter for more genre-bending TV insight. Looking for more context?
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Stephen King Mr. Mercedes Mindhunter The Silence Of The Lambs Horror Writer Crime Thriller Psychological Thriller Adaptation Nonfiction Book Serial Killers Behavioral Science Unit Hannibal Lecter Clarice Starling Grounded World Superb Crime Thriller Master Of The Genre Recast Version Courtroom Drama/Murder Mystery Supernatural Horror It
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