If you’ve read the book or seen the Christopher Walken movie, then you know that the tv series, Stephen King’s Dead Zone, shares similarities, but is not the same as its antecedents. Stephen King’s Dead Zone is Touched by an Angel for secular viewers who enjoyed the original book or the movie. It is the kind of tv that you can watch while working or web surfing. Stephen King’s Dead Zone is deeply mainstream though it occasionally takes forays into the darker side of humanity, but never stays too long. Stephen King’s Dead Zone can be deeply silly and ridiculous when it makes Johnny Smith play an action hero or characters doubt his abilities after seasons of proof that he really can sense things. Anthony Michael Hall does a good job, but shouldn’t be asked to do anything that requires an accent. I can’t remember how many times Johnny Smith was accused of murder. Who knew that Maine was such a hotbed of crime and intrigue?!? Still Stephen King’s Dead Zone is way more optimistic than its antecedents. This Johnny Smith has friends, family and lovers galore, a community that loves and respects him and even manages to correct some deep historical family problems. Stephen King’s Dead Zone makes a noble effort to herald equal rights, but gets more wrong than right. The problematic person usually ends up being a self-hating black person or homosexual though occasionally they’ll toss us a skinhead. No endemic problems here. There were some promising apocalyptic foreboding plot points, but they are largely dropped in later seasons. Biggest mistakes towards the end: switching the actor who played the son and eliminating most of the main characters in one season. Stephen King’s Dead Zone isn’t a must see, but is a mild diversion