“Bag of Bones” (1998) is one of my favorite Stephen King books, so it’s refreshing to see A&E doing a beautiful job adapting it. (Part one was on Sunday, and the final two-hour installment will be at 8 p.m. Central Monday. If you missed part one, you can catch it at 6 p.m., or at the A&E website.)
It’s not an easy task to adapt this novel, which is laid-back in its pacing as it explores the comfortable but vaguely spooky setting of Maine’s Dark Score Lake (wonderful name, by the way). There are several plots going on: Bestselling author Mike Noonan (Pierce Brosnan) is grieving over the death of his wife, Jo (Annabeth Gish from “The X-Files”), and he’s happy to find she is haunting their lake cabin. After all, he loves his wife, and also, he writes better with her around.
Then we’re hit with a bunch of other stuff: A single mom (Melissa George) could potentially lose custody of her daughter (whom Mike rescues from the middle of a roadway) to her litigious, powerful father-in-law — a guy who allegedly tried to drown the little girl. (Part one ends with Mike seeing the girl — in the classic, King-style green corpse makeup — in his bathtub.) Mike is also getting visions of a 1930s jazz singer (Anika Noni Rose), whose records Jo was listening to as she painted the singer’s portrait in her “no boys allowed” studio next to the cabin. Oh, and Jo was pregnant when she died, so she might’ve been cheating on Mike.
The book is not tightly structured, thus allowing space for all of these seemingly divergent plots and also setting up the aforementioned pleasant mood where a reader can be shocked by a horrific moment or moved to tears by a moment of simple beauty. I read it more than a decade ago and don’t remember all of the plot details, but I do recall that “Bag of Bones” was one of those great King novels that lived and breathed and wasn’t beholden to a specific genre or formula. Sure, as Mike mentions in part one, next to a real human being, even the most well-written fictional character is nothing but a bag of bones, but darn if King doesn’t get close to bringing these people, situations and settings to life here.
And while the miniseries isn’t quite as good as King’s book (it can’t be), it gets as close as possible, starting with lovely helicopter shots of the lakes of Maine and moving to the evocative town on the lake. Smartly, writer Matt Venne and director Mick Garris refuse to speed up the plot. They let the standout cast get immersed in their roles, and they don’t attempt to give sharper context to the moments; they know this is meant to be a mood piece. (The need for subtle acting perhaps explains the stellar cast, which also includes veteran character actor Matt Frewer as Mike’s brother and Jason Priestley as Mike’s agent.)
Even after two hours, we can’t say for sure if Mike is genuinely in touch with these ghosts or if he’s going crazy. After part one, there’s a palpable feeling of mystery and anticipation to the proceedings, yet I can’t tell you precisely what the mystery is that needs solving.
But I do know I’ll be tuning in for part two.