Stephen King’s IT is a difficult beast to adapt. The final showdown is meant to be understood as being somewhat metaphorical, which works in the thousand-page epic that King created, but watching Bill actually bite the tongue of an eldritch alien has – unsurprisingly – not made it to either the television or film adaptations of the novel. We couldn’t make it work in the 90s, and we couldn’t make it work now. This Christmas after reading the book, I watched the 1990 miniseries and both the 2017 and 2019 films, because waiting on results is more stressful than watching seven kids deal with their trauma four times over. Seeing the story of the “Losers’ Club” play out differently each time got me thinking about how it should be adapted. As much as I loved the 2017 film, it really works much better as a tv show. The difficulty of what you want to keep and what you have to change means that you really need to have the whole story planned out. This was clearly not done for the films, where the scriptwriter has Mike deface a Native American artefact, the only alternative worse than just filming the tongue scene. It is also haphazardly ‘revealed’ that when Bev looked into the ‘Deadlights’ she actually saw each of her friends and herself die as adults, crucial information she decided to keep from her friends, and also from the audience. IT simply works best on the small screen.

The first advantage that tv has over film when adapting IT is that with tv you can use the book’s format. The story of the “Losers’ Club” is told in a non-linear fashion, cutting between the tweens and the adults. The 2019 film showed the problem with splitting up the adults and the kids into separate stories – the kids are the best part of it. However, you can’t tell the story in one film, so splitting the kids and the adults up makes sense. When it comes down to it, there’s not really enough in the adult’s story to put in a film. There’s the interludes where Mike gives the reader information about Derry’s backstories and how IT has corrupted the town over centuries, but that pauses the story and doesn’t really give the audience any essential information.You can include Maturin, the great turtle that created the universe and advises the Losers how to defeat IT, but even in the book finding out that the universe was created by an animal burping hurts the tension a little; it’s not worth the cost to include it. That’s why the film seems so sparse, it calls itself a meal when really it’s leftovers. 

In the first episode of the miniseries we see the kids’ whole story play out, interspersed with introductions to them as adults. This is unfortunately done terribly – we see all six phone-calls that Mike makes to the other Losers calling them home to Derry, and they all follow the same script. Worst of all, they don’t even meet in this part, which means that in the first half we know none of the kids will die because we see them as adults, diminishing the tension, and in the second half we hardly see the kids at all because their story is done. It’s truly the worst of both worlds. This is compounded by the decision to have Stanley commit suicide at the very end of part one rather than at the beginning. If the first thing we see is a man inviting his childhood friend back to town, and that man immediately kills himself, that establishes a different kind of tension. Instead of focusing on how the kids all make it out, we know that whatever they’re about to go through is literally worse than death. It also makes all of the scenes with young Stan bittersweet – even if he’s happy now, we know what happens to him later. Having this knowledge in the book provides a very different experience than that of the film or the tv show, and I’d really love to see it make it to the screen someday.

Another advantage that the tv format has over film is the length of time you can spend with the characters. There’s seven kids and six adults, and we need time to get to know each of them properly. One of the best moments in the miniseries is a scene early on in part two where, after Mike has shown Bill around town, the two pass the time before everyone meets up by messing around with Bill’s childhood bike. The scene is intercut with footage of them as children doing the same thing, and it reminds us how their happy childhood memories of this time are tinged with the threat of IT, while simultaneously investing us in the Losers as adults. Showing these interactions between a limited number of the group gives them room to breathe and establish their characters without vying for your attention among six others.  While watching the film, Mike’s limited screen-time really stood out to me in contrast to the rich scenes given to us by the miniseries. The tv show then follows with a scene where the remaining adult Losers meet up to reminisce over old times before they must confront what they are really there for. In the film such tender moments are breezed past, as most of the Loser’s reconnecting is seen in montage form because of how much must be covered later. 

I don’t want to exaggerate the quality of the existing IT mini-series. Leaving aside the out-of-date special effects and sloppy final form of IT, the dialogue leaves much to be desired. The decision to have Eddie announce to the group that he’s still a virgin when they are down in the sewers searching for IT borders on the absurd. However, these aren’t problems with the format, but rather problems with decisions made behind the scenes. The same can’t be said for the films. What IT deserves is a five part mini-series that focuses on the kids, only sparingly cutting back to the adults. If based on the five-part structure of the novel, there is time to do IT right. Overall, when it comes to IT, tv is King.