An early chapter in Stephen King’s sprawling horror-fantasy epic The Stand chillingly recounts how a lethal, bioengineered superflu spreads across the United States, eventually killing 99 percent of the human race. In one memorable passage, a mildly sick insurance salesman stops at a diner called Babe’s Kwik-Eat: “In the course of the meal he infected Babe, the dishwasher, two truckers in a corner booth, the man who came in to deliver bread, and the man who came in to change the records on the juke. He left the sweet thang that waited his table a dollar tip that was crawling with death.” It’s a brilliant setup, telegraphing the scope and severity and the disaster that follows—and it’s creepy as all get out. Unfortunately, this sequence isn’t in the new CBS All Access miniseries adaptation of King’s novel, which premieres on Dec. 17—and it’s a symptom, one might say, of the show’s larger problems.

King has written that The Stand was his attempt to create his own version of The Lord of the Ringsin modern America. It focuses on a handful of survivors, all immune to the epidemic. The heroes include Stu Redman, a Texan factory worker; Frannie Goldsmith, a pregnant college student from Maine; Larry Underwood, a one-hit-wonder rock musician from New York City; Nick Andros, a deaf drifter from Nebraska; and Tom Cullen, a developmentally disabled Oklahoman handyman. All have dreams of a devout, elderly Black psychic named Abagail Freemantle, known as “Mother Abagail,” who urges them to gather together in peaceful Boulder, Colorado, for an upcoming battle against evil. It’s an evil personified by the supernaturally powerful Randall Flagg, who’s gathering his own minions in decadent Las Vegas; they include Frannie’s creepy neighbor, Harold Lauder; New Hampshire schoolteacher Nadine Cross; formerly imprisoned thief and murderer Lloyd Henreid; and a bizarre pyromaniac nicknamed “the Trashcan Man.”

It’s a lengthy, Manichean tale of paranormal horror—and even lengthier in its expanded, 1,152-page edition, released in 1990, which added hundreds of pages to the original 1978 text. But it’s never less than riveting as the various characters travel across an American hellscape, encountering some of the worst elements of humanity—and some of the best. The book also notably features two disabled, independent heroic characters—a rarity for the ’70s and uncommon even now. On the other hand, it only includes one major character of color: Mother Abagail, who fits far too snugly into problematic magical-Black-person tropes.

The new miniseries’ casting is less lily-white, fortunately, but the show has other issues that drag it down. While the novel mostly sticks to a straightforward, chronological structure, the series is peppered with numerous flashbacks. As a result, there’s no rising sense of dread, no compounding feeling of horror—just foregone conclusions. Viewers get to see the revolting effects of the superflu, which involves grossly swollen throats and copious amounts of mucus, but they never get a sense of the sickening scale of the epidemic’s impact on the world.

For example, at one point, Larry, ably played by Watchmen’s Jovan Adepo, briefly wades through a surprisingly clean-looking Manhattan sewer to get to the George Washington Bridge; in the book, his character travels through a corpse- and car-clogged Lincoln Tunnel—one of the tale’s most harrowing sequences. The scenes set in den-of-evil Las Vegas feature public chainsaw fights in the background, but they never feel like they’re taking place in a roiling city; it just looks like a moderately crowded set.

The performances are also curiously muted. Oscar winner Whoopi Goldberg disappointingly phones in her portrayal of Mother Abagail, and X-Men’s James Marsden, as Stu, is aggressively bland, as is Shirley’s Odessa Young as Frannie. The Little Drummer Girl’s Alexander Skarsgård, as the demonic Randall Flagg, never feels like a convincing threat; indeed, he’s introduced to the strains of Billy Joel’s whistly tune “The Stranger,” which feels like unintentional comedy. Trinkets’ Henry Zaga and Orange Is the New Black’s Brad William Henke are both fine actors, but one wonders why the producers, in the year 2020, didn’t cast disabled actors in the roles of Nick and Tom, respectively. Only Adepo and It Chapter Two’s Owen Teague, as the malevolent Harold, show some signs of life—but it’s not enough to revive this moribund adaptation.

Some viewers may be tempted to abandon this version and re-watch the 1994 ABC miniseries, which starred Gary Sinise and Molly Ringwald. It was a bit cheesy at times, to be sure, but it was shorter—and much, much livelier. Only six episodes of the new miniseries were made available to critics, out of nine; King himself is reported to have written an all-new ending to the story. Perhaps things improve toward the end—but, unlike several characters in The Stand, one doesn’t hold out much hope.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.