In 2010, iconic horror author Stephen King recounted some of his top-10 favorite TV shows of the year for Entertainment Weekly. The first three choices were familiar, widely acclaimed titles, including Friday Night Lights, The Walking Dead, and Breaking Bad. But the fourth entry was a less well-known series that he singled out as something special, describing it as a crossbreed between Lost and 24. Unlike those long-running, Emmy-winning shows, this one only lasted a single season on NBC.
For a series with such a short lifespan, The Event packed an impressive amount of compelling story and action across its 22 episodes. The ensemble cast was filled with heavy hitters, and the plot twists were ambitious, driving a sprawling narrative that kept viewers guessing week to week. While its cancellation left audiences hanging, in hindsight, it feels like a show tailor-made for the binge-watch era.
‘The Event’ Was a Very Ambitious Network Drama
Premiering in the fall of 2010, The Event was billed as a sprawling ensemble thriller blending political conspiracy, science fiction, and interwoven character arcs. At the center of the story was Sean Walker, played by Jason Ritter, an everyman who becomes entangled in a global conspiracy after his girlfriend, Leila (Sarah Roemer), vanishes during their vacation. His desperate search soon collides with President Elias Martinez (Blair Underwood), who is grappling with the moral implications of a secret CIA prison in Alaska housing extraterrestrial beings who crashed on Earth in 1944.
The sci-fi element revolved around these detainees, who appeared to be human but were eventually revealed to be extraterrestrials. Their DNA differed from humans by less than one percent, and they aged at a much slower rate. While some were held in captivity, others, known as “the Sleepers,” had escaped and were secretly living among humans. This twist provided a rich narrative engine, constantly forcing viewers to question which characters might be otherworldly. The impressive cast also included Laura Innes, Željko Ivanek, Scott Patterson, and Clifton Collins Jr. With multiple timelines, shifting perspectives, and relentless cliffhangers, The Event quickly drew comparisons to Lost. The pilot alone set the tone by unfolding across three different timelines, which was ambitious, especially for a weekly broadcast series.
Its complex structure and frequent flashbacks likely confused many casual viewers, while scheduling delays during the 2010-2011 season further stalled its momentum. Ultimately, NBC cancelled the series after just 22 episodes, leaving countless questions unresolved. But with streaming now the dominant way audiences consume TV, it’s hard not to wonder whether The Event would have been a huge hit in a binge-watching era.
‘The Event’ Would Have Thrived on Streaming
While The Event debuted at the tail end of the network boom for serialized sci-fi and thriller dramas, it may have arrived just a few years too soon. In 2010, TV still operated on a traditional broadcast model, with audiences expected to tune in weekly and keep track of shifting timelines and major interwoven storylines. For a show so reliant on sustained momentum and complex plotting, that was a tall order.
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Other series from that period, like ABC’s FlashForward and V, faced similar fates, each lasting just one season despite big budgets and heavy promotion. It was nearly impossible to recreate the lightning in a bottle that Lost captured, but that didn’t stop networks from trying. Even Lost struggled at times to keep casual audiences engaged, but it benefited from being one of the only shows of its kind at a time when appointment TV and watercooler buzz still reigned supreme. The Event, by contrast, was competing in an increasingly crowded landscape with little room for error.
Yet in hindsight, it’s easy to see how The Event could have thrived if it premiered today. In the streaming era, when viewers can binge an entire season in a weekend, complex serialized stories don’t feel like homework. Series like Manifest and Designated Survivor, both of which found second lives on Netflix, proved that audiences are more willing than ever to immerse themselves in layered narratives if they’re able to take it all in at once, or at the very least, watch it at their own pace. Had The Event launched on a platform like Netflix, Hulu, or Apple TV+, it’s not hard to imagine it building a dedicated following that would keep the series alive for multiple seasons.
It’s Not Surprising That Stephen King Loved ‘The Event’
It makes perfect sense that Stephen King gravitated toward The Event. Much like his own work, especially sprawling ensemble pieces like The Stand or Under the Dome, the show balanced an ambitious mix of everyday characters caught in extraordinary circumstances. King has always been drawn to stories that blend high-stakes suspense with high-concept sci-fi elements, and The Event delivered exactly that. For an author who thrives on exploring how ordinary people react when the world tilts into the surreal, The Event was right in his wheelhouse.
It’s also easy to see why a master of suspense like King found himself captivated. In that same Entertainment Weekly column, he called The Event a “clever, suspenseful drama” and singled out Jason Ritter and Laura Innes for their standout performances. His praise highlighted exactly what made the show special, specifically that it borrowed the relentless urgency of 24 while adding the speculative mystery and emotional depth that made Lost a phenomenon.
If you’ve never checked out The Event, it’s worth giving it a shot — even knowing it only lasted a single season. Stephen King rarely gets it wrong when he champions a story, and he certainly didn’t here. Yes, you’ll be left with some cliffhangers, but the ride itself pulled DNA from other shows and was original in its own right, making it a suspenseful character drama that still holds up. And still, it’s hard not to imagine an alternate timeline where The Event premiered on a streaming platform, found an audience ready to binge, and stuck around long enough to answer its biggest questions.
