The Zone to Tune Into Channel Zero

Next month The Zone will premiere horror anthology Channel Zero.

The Wall Street Journal dubbed it a “creepy new series” from some of the minds behind Twin Peaks, Hannibal and Child’s Play, and predicts it “will plunge viewers into an odd world of murder, obsession and mass hallucination.

“The six-episode first season is based on Candle Cove, a short story by Kris Straub about a bizarre children’s television show and its disturbing connection to several different people who grew up watching it.

“It stars Paul Schneider (Parks and Recreation) and Fiona Shaw (the Harry Potter franchise), and was directed by Craig William Macneill, director of 2015 indie horror film The Boy.”

“This is one nightmare-scape of a show,” said the New York Times. “It’s based on a piece of creepypasta, micro-stories online that attract cultish followings.

“Who knows whether devotees of that genre will like this TV adaptation, which was written by Nick Antosca, but it’s stylishly served and, for the uninitiated just looking for Halloween-month fare, rather addictive.”

But The AV Club thought it disappointing and derivative while Pop Matters argued “the commonality between this series and Stranger Things may have more to do with the (well-deserved) rise in Stephen King’s stock as a writer than anything else.

“It would be a shame, however, to dismiss Channel Zero as merely a clone of Stranger Things.”

Next month The Zone will premiere season three off Salem (9.30 Mondays from November 7) and the 2006 Stan Lee reality series, Who Wants to be a Superhero? (8.30 Wednesdays from November 30).

Lined up in the Friday Frights slot are: The Reaping (November 4), The Mist (November 11), The Crazies (November 18) and Blood Creek (November 25).