Stephen King's Golden Years isn't one of his best, but it certainly ranks among the weirdest. Starting with the 1976 adaptation of Carrie, Stephen King has become one of the most adapted authors of all time. This includes classics like The Shawshank Redemption and The Shining, though lots of duds like The Dark Tower and King's only directorial outing Maximum Overdrive exist too. Many of King's novels are sprawling epics, making them difficult to condense into a two-hour movie.
That's why so many of his books are better suited to the miniseries format where the story and characters have more room to breathe. Some of his most notable miniseries adaptations including IT, the 1994 miniseries of The Stand and the underrated Storm Of The Century. Of course, many of these early miniseries come with the downside of low-budgets or producers just looking to cash in on King's name, leading to weaker fare like The Langoliers or The Tommyknockers.
One of the master's lesser-known miniseries is 1991's Stephen King's Golden Years. This Benjamin Button-style tale follows a 70-year-old janitor who works in a government lab. The lab's doctor is working on a formula that can revive dead cells, but an accident causes an explosion that doses Harlan with chemicals. He survives but starts to subtly age in reverse, with wrinkles disappearing and his eyesight improving - while also giving off a green glow in the dark.
Soon Harlan and his wife (Frances Sternhagen, The Mist) go on the run from a secret government group known as "The Shop." Stephen King's Golden Years was sold as a novel for television, and the story plays out slowly over the course of seven episodes. Unfortunately, "slowly" is the operative word. The pacing of the miniseries can really drag and the flat direction does little to prop it up. The series at least features some great actors, including Stephen Root and Felicity Huffman, who help viewers connect with the characters. The central romance between Harlan and his wife is also quite sweet.
The author himself crops up for a cameo as a bus driver in a later episode. Stephen King's Golden Years also features a return appearance from The Shop, the shady organization from Firestarter and other novels. While other Stephen King miniseries may be more outlandish, Golden Years is still one of his weirdest. It feels like its one of his concepts that would have benefitted from being feature-length, as it feels painfully stretched out. The mixture of touching old-age romance, a fugitive on the run subplot and b-move mad science story gone wrong never gel organically, and there's precious little action or excitement to make up for that.
Stephen King's Golden Years ended on a cliffhanger as it's was expected to continue, but CBS opted not to pick it up as a series. The video release gave an alternate, happier ending to wrap things up, though for viewers who invested in Harlan's journey, it's still not very satisfying.