The Best Time Travel Miniseries Of All Time Is Stephen King's Ambitious 8-Part Effort On Hulu

Published Sep 23, 2026, 2:32 PM EDT

Some shows try to find workarounds, like Prime Video’s criminally underrated cyberpunk series The Peripheral. That show avoided the question of how bodies move through time by having its characters control robotic bodies in the future, meaning their physical selves remained rooted in the present while only their consciousnesses traveled to the future via quantum tunneling. However, it’s not like this is the only plot hole to come from most time travel storylines.

There are a small handful of shows, like Netflix’s three-season masterpiece Dark, that managed to successfully navigate the complexities of time travel throughout their run. However, there are also a lot of iconic shows that involved time travel, such as ABC’s seminal mystery Lost, and ended up derailing their stories when this plot element became too confusing or convoluted. That’s why it is so impressive that 2016’s Stephen King adaptation 11.22.63, from Hulu, pulled off a perfect self-contained time travel plot in only eight episodes.

Why 11.22.63 Is TV's Best Miniseries About Time Travel

The prolific Stephen King might be best known for his contributions to the horror genre, but the author has penned plenty of fantasy, sci-fi, crime, mystery, and even straightforward character drama stories and books. One of King’s most underrated adaptations, the Kathy Bates vehicle Dolores Claiborne, is a poignant small-town drama that has more in common with Mystic River than Carrie or The Shining.

Similarly, King’s 2011 novel 11.22.63, a time travel adventure about the Kennedy assassination, could not be less like his intense, gruesome horror books. The book’s Hulu adaptation stars disgraced actor James Franco as Jake Epping, an English teacher whose friend, Chris Cooper’s Al Templeton, offers him an opportunity that he can’t turn down. Al can help Jake travel back to 1960 to prevent Kennedy’s assassination on the titular date, provided Jake doesn’t grow too attached to the alternative version of his life that he builds in the past.

It goes without saying that things soon go wrong, and the conflicted antihero Jake is torn between saving Kennedy’s life and prioritizing his own continued happiness in 1963. While this is hardly a surprise, the show still finds plenty of room for genuine surprises and shocking twists even without the horror and gore of other successful small-screen King adaptations like the It spinoff Welcome to Derry.

There Are Better Time Travel Shows, But All With Multiple Seasons

With an astounding supporting cast including Lucy Fry, George MacKay, T.R. Knight, Josh Duhamel, Gil Bellows, Kelly McCormack, and Jonny Coyne, 11.22.63 is a must-watch for fans of King’s propulsive writing. However, the show will also appeal to sci-fi TV fans more broadly, as its smart, self-contained story represents the best instance of creators using the miniseries format to build a clever, satisfying time travel story with as few frustrating loose ends as possible.

While the BBC’s cult sensations Life of Mars and Doctor Who, the Netflix comedy Russian Doll, and Netflix’s underrated three-season series Travelers all prove that there are time travel shows even more satisfying and cohesive than 11.22.63, these series all needed multiple seasons to make their ambitious stories work. In contrast, 11.22.63 is notable for just how quickly and slickly Hulu’s Stephen King adaptation avoids the common pitfalls of sci-fi storytelling to deliver a taut time-travel plot.