‘This life we think we’re living isn’t real… In the dark, all the shadows disappear…’
Stephen King adaptations have always been notoriously patchy, especially those conceived for television. This, combined with a long gestation period in development hell, successfully tempered the expectations for the 2025 adaptation of King’s 2019 novel, The Institute. Despite all this, it succeeds more than it fails…
The Institute begins with Luke Ellis (Joe Freeman), a 12-year-old genius with telekinetic powers, being ripped from his suburban Minneapolis home and transported to the titular Institute – a shadowy place with links to powerful government organisations. Meanwhile, decorated former policeman, Tim Jamieson (Ben Barnes), arrives in the nearby town of DuPray, South Carolina, and takes a job as a night patrolman alongside his feisty colleague, Wendy Gullickson (Hannah Galway). The Institute is presided over by the uncompromising Ms. Sigsby (Mary-Louise Parker), her second-in-command, Stackhouse (Julian Richings) and the well intentioned doctor, Daniel Hendricks (Robert Joy). Luke isn’t the only kid to wake up in this strange place, however. Avery Dixon (Viggo Hanvelt), both younger and more powerful than Luke, arrives later, while Nicky (Fionn Laird), is the relative veteran of the group having arrived at the Institute several weeks before Luke and Avery.
While director Jack Bender and creator Benjamin Cavell do a good job in capturing the darker elements of King’s novel (they pull no punches in their depiction of child cruelty), the source material isn’t dense enough to justify eight hour-long episodes. The fact that a second series has already been confirmed despite the fact that the source material has now been exhausted feels like a misstep. Of the two narratives presented here, the time spent in the Institute is much more rewarding than the long sections that take place following Barnes’ admirable, but rather dull night patrolman, and there is a nagging feeling that we could have easily told this story in five episodes rather than eight (which, again, doesn’t bode well for a second season).
One element that does work here, however, is the casting. As the child of Amanda Abbington and Martin Freeman, it is perhaps no surprise that Joe Freeman is very much at ease in what is his television debut. The rest of the young cast are a mixed bag with Laird the pick of the bunch, delivering a surprisingly world-weary performance for one so young, but it is the Institute staff who really elevate Cavell’s adaptation, with Parker, Richings and Joy sharing an authentic workplace chemistry (the mutual distrust that they all carry with them is particularly convincing).
Kids-with-powers is a well worn trope for King (it is a concept that appears prominently in Carrie, Firestarter, The Shining, and The Dead Zone among others), but The Institute, in both book form and in this TV adaptation, offers enough singular intrigue to ensure that I will be tuning in to season two, albeit with reservations. This first season will go down as a moderate success – something that automatically puts it in the higher echelon of TV adaptations of King stories.
