Tragically, Sky Atlantic’s IT: Welcome to Derry is not a spin-off of the hit Channel 4 sitcom Derry Girls but a prequel to Stephen King’s IT set in a sleepy all-American small town in deepest Maine in 1962. Just how little this enjoyably scary period drama has in common with Lisa McGee’s cult series is spelt out in the cold open to the first episode, in which a young boy is kidnapped by a possessed family, including a mother who gives birth to a demonic baby right before his eyes. Toto, we’re not in Derry any more. Well, we are – just not that Derry.
King fans will already be familiar with his North American Derry. It served as the backdrop for the original IT and its clown villain, Pennywise. He’s back for this show, and is portrayed once again by the gleeful and malevolent Bill Skarsgård. Alas, devotees of terrifying Swedish actors in nightmare jester make-up will have to wait for further into the eight-part series before he makes his appearance (former Hollywood A-lister Madeleine Stowe also has an undisclosed role to be revealed several episodes in).
Pennywise might be a wicked demon with an endless supply of trademark red balloons, but he also enjoys his time off. As IT veterans will recall, he manifests in Derry every 27 years to feed on local children. Having chronicled his return in 1989 in the first IT movie (2017), the film’s director, Andy Muschietti, now rewinds to 1962 and a Derry in the grip of Cold War paranoia (Muschietti co-developed the show and directed the first four instalments).
The time period may have changed but Muschietti sticks with the Stranger Things-esque kids-on-bikes formula of the first big-screen IT (an unsatisfying 2019 sequel caught up with the original clown posse in middle age). When local urchin Matty (Miles Ekhardt) goes missing – it is he we see mauled by that flying baby – his school friends decide to track him down. They include Lilly (Clara Stack), an awkward neighbour of Matty, readjusting to normality after her father’s incarceration in an asylum. She is joined by Ronnie (Amanda Christine), the daughter of the owner of the cinema where Matty was last seen watching The Music Man – a 1962 musical about a huckster who swindles a small town.
As Pennywise works his dark mischief off-screen, the inhabitants of Derry have other concerns. Chief among them is the enigmatic airbase just outside town, which houses an Area 32-style quarantine zone. This is the peak Invasion of the Body Snatchers era and a newly assigned US Air Force Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) is quickly dragged into the mystery of what is going on behind the sealed-off warehouse.
He has brought with him his wife, Charlotte (Taylour Paige) and 12-year-old son, Will (Blake Cameron James). As African Americans new to a small and overwhelmingly white town in 1960s America, you might expect that they would encounter a degree of racism. But the citizens of Derry seem unusually enlightened and Charlotte experiences little prejudice as she settles in. If it weren’t for the killer clown on the loose, Derry is initially presented as heaven on earth (admittedly, the picture grows more complicated as children continue to disappear).
IT was petrifying in places and Welcome to Derry has a similar enthusiasm for body horror. Viewers with a sensitive stomach are advised to have a cushion to hand, the better to dive behind as the blood starts to gush. There are lots of jump-scares and an extended set-piece featuring some of the most shocking surprise deaths this side of prime Game of Thrones.
Muschietti is not overly reverential towards the source material – for instance, in the original IT novel, Pennywise returns to Derry in 1957 rather than 1962. Still, King diehards will be impressed by how faithfully the show recreates IT’s atmosphere of fetid, rising dread. Even Derry Girls fans who have switched on in confusion might be convinced to stick around – at least until the geysers of gore get going and the body parts pile up.
