The Outsider: 3 reasons to watch Sky Atlantic’s new Stephen King series on NOW TV

HBO mini-series The Outsider is a chilling new mystery series for 2020 and every episode is available to watch now on Sky Atlantic with NOW TV.

Starring Ben Mendelsohn, Jason Bateman and Cynthia Erivo, the story centres on the horrifying murder of 11-year-old Frankie Peterson.

Police detective Ralph Anderson (Mendelsohn), who is still grieving the loss of his own son, takes on the bleak case. However, as the mystery twists and spirals into darker places, Ralph brings in private investigator Holly Gibney (Erivo) in the hope that her unorthodox style can help explain the unexplainable.

 As supernatural forces edge their way into the case and everything they previously knew to be real is ripped apart.

Here are three reasons to watch The Outsider…

An impossible mystery

The opening premise of The Outsider follows a traditional police procedural format with the local detective hunting down the brutal killer responsible for the death of a young boy.

Ralph Anderson’s investigation takes him to local baseball coach Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman) and the initial case against him feels rock solid with witnesses and evidence directly linking him to the crime.

But The Outsider is no ordinary cop show or simple murder mystery. Maitland strongly denies any involvement in the murder and produces the perfect alibi that places him in a different town at the time of the killing.

How could Maitland be in two places at once? Who is the hooded figure lurking in the background of so many scenes? The Outsider piles riddles on top of questions and will have you hooked from the start.

A perfect winter chiller

The Outsider is perfect box set viewing for a wet and chilly winter. Dark, twitchy and restless, this is a series to devour in slow, scary evenings.

A macabre tale with a haunting boogeymen lurking in the shadows, The Outsider is brutal and not for the faint-hearted.

Rooted in small-town life, the very ordinariness of the setting and characters offsets the supernatural happenings and that combination is what will leave your hairs on the back of your neck standing up.

If you loved the terrifying moments of True Detective, The Outsider will be right up your street.

Hypnotic performances

Jason Bateman and Ben Mendelsohn will hook you in at the start with brilliantly understated performances and a couple of head-to-head scenes that are so tense, they don’t give you a moment to blink.

However, as the series progresses, it is the arrival of Cynthia Erivo, above, as Holly Gibney which takes The Outsider to another level.

The Tony Award-winner brings a captivating energy that balances intelligence and knowledge with sensitivity and fragility.

Watch The Outsider Box Set on Sky Atlantic with NOW TV.

Watch this if you liked…

True Detective, Twin Peaks, The Night Of, Dublin Murders.