The series is based on Lars von Trier's five-hour Danish television movie 'Riget' (The Kingdom), which Stephen King and producer Mark Carliner discovered while browsing a video store during the making of the 1997 TV miniseries adaptation of King's 'The Shining'.

King and Carliner initially tried to buy the rights to the Danish original but found that Columbia Pictures had already acquired them intending to make a theatrical film; after five years Columbia gave up and traded the rights in exchange for the rights to King's novella 'Secret Window, Secret Garden'.

This project marked the first time Stephen King adapted someone else's work rather than writing an original story or adapting his own novel.

King added a new central character, painter Peter Rickman, whose hit-by-a-vehicle accident was based on King's own real-life experience of being struck by a minivan.

Stephen King described the finished series as 'the thing I like best out of all the things I've done' and referred to its structure as a 'novelization for television.'

Although conceived and pitched as a continuing series, with King committing to write a story line for a potential second season, the show was cancelled after its first season despite the series premiere being the highest-rated drama debut of the year on ABC before ratings dropped sharply.

The character of Otto's German Shepherd, Blondi, is named as an in-joke reference to Adolf Hitler's own dog of the same name, and Blondi is depicted as thinking with a German accent.

Stephen King himself appears in the series in a guest cameo credited simply as 'writer.'

Despite mixed critical reviews and a 46% Rotten Tomatoes approval rating, the series received Emmy Award nominations for Special Visual Effects for a Series and Main Title Design.