The TV show has taken an odd spin on 'adaptation'. We came to terms early in the first season that this show would not be along the lines of something like Game of Thrones, which sticks relatively close to the source material and seems to be out to satisfy fans. The dome coming down over a town called Chester's Mill and most of the names and basic characters in the novel is about where the inspiration for the show calls it a day. The CBS version of Under the Dome is exactly that: the network television version of a King work, stretched out to try and accommodate multiple seasons. The stakes are lower, with the inhabitants actually finding a way out of the dome this year. The characters are less abrasive, more cookie cutter, less real (I mean, really, how could they include all the rape and killing and drug use of the novel, this ain't HBO), as are the actors playing them. All the folks in front of the camera probably have great head shots, but once their mouths start moving it's kind of weak.
King has apparently put his stamp of approval on the show. He even wrote the first episode of season 2, which has completely departed from his source novel. I'm not in love with the show, but I've come this far, so I'll probably keep watching, at least through this season (and I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be the last). I liked the first season a bit more. This season's highlight was a multiple episode guest spot for Dwight Yoakam, who is delightful, but that now seems to be at an end.
Really, any King adaptation is going to have troubles, because the magic of his work is in all the insights he has into the human psyche, not in the events of whatever story he's telling. And that is a very difficult thing to translate to any other medium, especially when you completely depart from all of that and just use skeletons of the characters and the one uniting factor of the original story, the fact that they are Under the Dome.
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