Shaw, Thomason, Abrams & Co. really nail the core concepts of King’s storytelling here. Each character gets a good amount of screen time to focus on introspection. ... Castle Rock is a can’t-miss series for Stephen King fans and a must-watch horror show for fans of dark, thrilling, character-focused mysteries.

The show makes skillful use of its episodic medium, carefully pacing its storylines and building out its world while still making sure each hour is filtered through generous helpings of creepiness.

Through its first three episodes, Castle Rock builds out its world and character relationships thoughtfully and deliberately. Whether it holds up through the entire 10-episode first season remains to be seen, but Castle Rock gets off to a strong, engrossing start.

This is a solid case of so far, so pretty good.

When Castle Rock is focused on being a damn fine story--a smart one, a playful one--it can be good, even great. When it tries to be a wonderland for King fans, it races past the line of referential, rounds through fan service, and steps into cliché, sometimes even inching toward self-parody. Your response to that particular tendency may range from puzzlement, particularly if you’re not much of a King fan, to downright irritating.

Four episodes in, the plenitude of incident creates an effect more like dilution than density, and it’s hard to see the trees for the forest of allusion. Castle Rock sometimes feels like a grab bag of rehashed tropes. It is freshest when its paranormality flickers with metaphors for a real world haunted by prison systems and spotted with dying small towns and plagued by sensations of outsiderness.

If it’s meant to frighten, it’s not very good at that. If it’s meant to ruminate on the nature of evil, then that message never gets through. If it’s meant to creep you out, then it barely registers. ... The first three episodes, which premiere in one chunk Wednesday (a new episode will be released each week), spend too much time laying groundwork, meting out clues and references at such a sluggish pace that they’re not worth noting, unless the show considers its mission to act as a Stephen King book club.

Three episodes in and i have to say that they are doing small town mystery right. These three episodes have been pretty much dedicated to creating setting and characters. I got so quickly immersed into the town and its people that the 3 hours literally flew by. (Also, all the Stephen King references and nods!) Highly recommend it!

With a convoluted and underwhelming plot, bland characters, and few thrills or chills, Castle Rock does not approach its source material's level of greatness.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Castle Rock could have been great if the writers had put more effort in the story itself than relying on the effects en gimmicks of time shift, because Ive seen too many series and movies based on this concept, to make it so called only for the very smart viewers , but in the end you can always predict the last episode from a to z.

Once more, King's wonderful worlds fail when they come to screen. The show was too slow and boring for me. While the first episodes kept everything (too) dark and (too) mysterious, they also failed to hold my interest in the story and the characters. Only in the end, there is some interesting stuff going on, but unfortunately, it's too late to save the show by this time.