Stephen King has made no secret of the fact that he’s an instant fan of a new thriller series he’s watching on Netflix, but there’s an interesting caveat to his review. The show is The Tourist, a BBC series starring Jamie Dornan as a man who wakes up with no memory of who he is after a car crash. HBO Max carried the first season of the show in 2022, but later confirmed that it had no plans to stream the second season. Now, The Tourist has been picked up by Netflix, which has brought it to King’s attention.
Netflix dropped the first season of The Tourist in February in anticipation of streaming the second season on February 29. Based on King’s review of The Tourist, it sounds like he hasn’t seen the whole series, which means that his reaction should be taken with a pinch of salt. King’s opinions on the series are spot-on for how much of it he has seen, but those opinions might change as he watches more episodes.
The Tourist Episode 1 Is Great – And It’s Obvious Why Stephen King Likes It
King has a lot of praise for The Tourist, calling it “flat-out terrific” while using other laudatory descriptors like “exciting, suspenseful, mysterious,” but he admits that he’s only seen the first episode. His review is based entirely on the opening chapter, which is just a taste of the series and not an indicator of what the whole show is like. That first episode is great, but the true test of The Tourist’s success is whether it manages to grow on viewers in the episodes that follow.
It’s easy to see why King has responded so positively to the first episode of The Tourist. The first episode is the one with the most horror elements, and the most feeling of suspense and tension, before the series settles into a more comfortable tone from the second episode onward. With its engaging air of mystery and palpable suspense, The Tourist’s first episode is the one that’s most in line with King’s own storytelling sensibility.
The Tourist Peaks With Season 1, Episode 1 (But It’s Still Worth Watching)
While The Tourist’s first episode is great, it unfortunately never gets any better from there. That first episode is the one that’s most like Stephen King’s work, and the one that’s the most captivating and suspenseful. Even two seasons in, the first episode is still the best episode of the show. But the rest of the series is still worth watching for anyone who found the first episode engaging; it’s just a bit different than the tone set by the pilot.
