There has been a lot of terrific new television to watch in 2022 – so much so that it can be overwhelming. Recommendations come flying fast, and while you may catch up on The Bear and Yellowjackets, you might still be behind on The Sandman and Paper Girls. If you’re not sure what to watch next, one thing that can always help is to hone in on the thoughts of one particular voice. For example, if you’re a person who trusts the brilliant mind of Stephen King, the next show you should be checking out is the critically acclaimed limited series Black Bird on Apple TV+.
Created by author/filmmaker Dennis Lehane, Black Bird finished its six episode run last week, and the writer of IT, The Shining, and The Stand lavished praise upon the miniseries as a whole following the arrival of the finale. Taking to his personal Twitter account, King wrote,
BLACK BIRD (Apple+): Brilliant and riveting. A Dennis Lehane masterpiece. All episodes now available.August 6, 2022
The Apple TV+ series is based on the autobiography In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, And A Dangerous Bargain For Redemption by James Keene and Hillel Levin, and it stars Taron Egerton, Paul Walter Hauser, Greg Kinnear, and the greatly missed Ray Liotta – who died earlier this year. Egerton stars as Keene, who we meet at the start of the series as a successful drug dealer who sees his life fall apart when the police crash raid his mansion.
After being mislead on a plea deal, Keene is thrown in prison for 10 years with no opportunity for parole… but then he gets thrown a life preserver. The police recognize the protagonist as a personable individual who can get his fellow inmates talking, and they want to take advantage of that skill. They offer to commute his entire sentence should he agree to be transferred to a maximum security institution and developing a horrifying dynamic with Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser) – the ultimate goal being to get him to confess to a string of homicides and reveal where the bodies of the known victims are.
Stephen King is far from the first person to celebrate the quality of Black Bird, as it is one of the most celebrated new shows of 2022. It sports a 97 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and has been hailed as one of the best shows on Apple TV+.
If you’re an individual who trusts the opinion of Stephen King and are looking for shows to watch, you should most definitely do yourself a favor and get an Apple TV+ subscription. Since the streaming service’s launch in late 2019, he has regularly lauded the original programming. He has called Servant the most bingeworthy show on TV; he praised Severance as “the loopiest, coolest, most involving limited series” of spring 2022; and he has dubbed Shining Girls as being “exactly what streaming was made for.”
As noted, all of Black Bird is now streaming on Apple TV+, and with a subscription you can also enjoy Lisey’s Story, which is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, and was adapted by the author himself.
You can keep track of all the Stephen King projects that Hollywood has in the works with our Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV guide, and discover the long history of adaptations with our weekly Adapting Stephen King column.
