HBO's 10-Part Horror Series Is Still TV's Best Lovecraft Show

Many of Lovecraft’s most famous stories, from "The Call of Cthulhu" to "At the Mountains of Madness," concern characters who encounter monstrous entities so unimaginably terrifying that just comprehending their existence alone is enough to render the protagonist insane. This is undeniably effective in literature, where the writer’s atmospheric scene setting does a lot of the heavy lifting.

Lovecraft Country Successfully Brought Lovecraft's Unique Horror To TV

Since these stories take place inside the minds of their main characters, Lovecraft’s books and stories can hint at the horrors of these unseen monsters without depicting them outright. This is far harder to pull off in visual media, where viewers have come to expect that even the most ambiguous horror movies and shows will eventually reveal their villains onscreen.

Put simply, failing to depict the monster onscreen is seen as a cop out in movies and TV, whereas it can sometimes be the scarier option in print. However, some shows have managed to work around this and successfully bring Lovecraft’s work to life onscreen. Netflix’s horror anthology Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, for example, adapted two of the author’s short stories.

That anthology show wisely went with stories that don’t feature Lovecraft’s infamous Old Ones, which made it easier for the show to portray its antagonists onscreen. However, two years earlier, an even more ambitious horror show took the author’s back catalog and used it to tell an immersive, socially conscious, and utterly terrifying horror story.

Based on author Matt Ruff’s novel of the same name from 2016, Lovecraft Country was a ten-episode horror drama that aired in 2020. The show followed Jonathan Majors’ Tic Freeman, a Korean War veteran who travels across the Jim Crow South in search of his missing father, joined by his Uncle, Courtney B. Vance’s George, and his friend, Jurnee Smollett’s photographer Leti.

In a fascinating meta exploration of both Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos and the racist history of the country the author was raised in, Lovecraft Country sees the group encounter both human evil in the form of systemic racism and cosmic evil in the show’s monsters and curses. Thus, Lovecraft Country managed to address the racism of Lovecraft’s writing while adapting it.

Lovecraft Country’s Story Blended Real-Life Horror With Cosmic Terror

The plot of Lovecraft Country is rooted in the very real horrors of the Jim Crow South, but the show’s story is still fantastical enough to feel like a true Lovecraft adaptation and a straightforward horror series. Technically, the show’s plot is not based on a specific Lovecraft book, but rather Ruff’s interpretation of the Cthulu Mythos.

However, shworunner Misha Green’s adaptation manages to ground the story in realistic history while also ensuring that its Lovecraftian elements are never reduced to background noise. The horrors of the author’s creations are just as vivid and chilling as the real-life racism that the characters face, and one particularly inventive twist even blends these two worlds into one.

A massive twist midway through Lovecraft Country makes the show’s story even more meta, introducing a new layer of complexity to its social commentary. To say anymore would be to run the risk of giving away too much, but suffice it to say that the show doesn’t stop at acknowledging the racism of Lovecraft’s writings.

Instead, this HBO masterpiece manages to use Lovecraft’s Elder Gods and the monsters of his Cthulhu Mythos to illustrate the horrors of American history as it was lived by people of color. Long before Sinners pulled off a similar coup, Lovecraft Country used familiar horror tropes to tell a story of privilege, exclusion, and racist violence.

Why Lovecraft Country Season 2 Never Happened

Since Lovecraft Country was almost universally praised upon its original release, it was somewhat surprising when the show failed to spawn a second season. However, in July 2021, HBO announced that Lovecraft Country season 2 was not happening, essentially turning the show’s ten episodes into a self-contained miniseries.

Journalist James Andrew Miller’s book Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers saw numerous Lovecraft Country writers claim that Green’s mismanagement of the show’s work environment led to its cancellation. Whatever the case behind the scenes, this meant that Lovecraft Country ended after only one outing despite remaining the best screen distillation of the controversial author’s work.