An eight-episode series available Friday on Apple TV+
The astonishingly prolific King adapts his 2006 novel “Lisey’s Story” into an eight-part Apple TV+ series, and that’s great but also a little troublesome, as the author might have been too close to his own work (one of his most personal stories) to trim the excess exposition off the bone. “Lisey’s Story” feels overstuffed at times and might have been even sharper and more terrifying if it had clocked in with five or six total episodes, but this is still an elegantly haunting journey with memorably raw and real performances from three of the best actresses in the world — Julianne Moore, Joan Allen and Jennifer Jason Leigh — as sisters whose bond has to stay strong enough to withstand the relentless onslaught of a crazed stalker, not to mention the dangers lurking in a world just outside the borders of reality. Clive Owen is also a standout as a Stephen King-esque author who has achieved enormous success, wealth and acclaim, but has never escaped a childhood so dark and so insane it’s a wonder he survived. Oh, and we often take detours into an in-between world that looks like Ingmar Bergman’s Waiting Room.